'Ul^Ml^^^lM^kf^^^ip^im 






,/^A(rv^0AnA 



AflA/^AAA/^^ 



wnrtAAnn, 



^n;AAA; 



ikmAUAkkUi 



f\^^m^n^, 









A/vAAAryAri 



^^/W^ 



flSft^AAs 



WAAAAMAAAftAMA 



WAAaa, 



'?|!?AAAAflAeOAAS'^'^A' 



''V^O'^AaaAAaa, 



mMf^^^r\nf\r^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



S]^. ©ijp^rig]^ !f xt*. 

• Shelf-.-il.xe- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AAA^AAAA, 



aAaaAAAAW/^AA 



V^r^/^AAA . /^A 



^A^A/^A: 






^nfPM,;;^-::'^?^^ 



'nAAAAAAAA/^.'^.^^^AU 



^omM^AAAAAA 



c^i^^KAA^ 






,-.^Ap,nr^Ar\nAAAAAA 



'^nmAAAAA- 



*^000O^aaaaa^ 



AAAAaaa, 



|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA^A^,^rtrvA,A^^:;2i2:;;" 



(^A/\aaA'^aaoo,a,,.^ 
aAaaAAAAAMM^ 






,rs/C\,^AAr\n/^ 



^^mm 



m^.A^^'^^h.m^r: 



.';'nA 



^VA^MA^r^AAA, 



rf\N^fi^f^i^m?Ri^f^ARf\f<, 



>AX-^^SRQAO:.A.''^Orv 



lAA;^:.^: 



A AA Ar\ Aft AAo AoftAC « : « : A : 






\KAic. >^,r^^'<^r^^^^^/ 



9a/?aAa^aa, 



sp^^ 



"^^mtf^, 



^^M\^, 



^A^a^^A^^^^SMSSflM^^ 



^oSS$? 



/^C\Ar>r^AAAAnnnOA/rAAAAAAA/^AAAA/ 



'^A'^^A^AA^|f^5;^.nA.,^ 



^o^oooQo^oocomo^AA; 



\aaAaA'*\Aa< 



, A An An A A 






PRA^AA^gM^AM^^^JS^ 



AAAAAAAa, 



-'W^AA^AArt.'WA^, 



1 



t 



/^<v^o^•c/.^<v^<^/^<>^c■^•^/Cxy^ 




SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS 



By W. MATTIEU "WILLIAMS, F.R.A.S. F,C.S. 

Avt/ior of " The Fuel of the Stin,'" " A Simple Treatise on Heaf,^' dr. 

BHIXO IVo. 80 OF* I^OVEI^I^'S LIBRARY, 

12mo, handsome paper covers, Price, 20 Cents. 

"Mr. ^Nlattipu Williams is undoubtedly able to present scientific subjects to 
the popular mind witli much clearness aud force ; and these essaj^s may ..^e 
read with advantage by those, who, ^^'ithout having had special training, are yet 
sufficiently intelligent *e take interest in the movement of events iu the scientific 
wovMi.."— Academy. 

''Tine title of Mr._Mattieu Williams' 'Science in Short Chapters' exactly 
explains its subject, 'Clear and simple, these brief reprints from all sorts of 
periodicals are just what Angelina may profitably read to Edwin while he is 
sorting his papers, or trimming the lalnps, if (liice some highly domesticated 
Edwins) he insists on doing that ticklish bitof house-work Wwnaalf.''— Graphic. 

"The papers are not mere rechaufiles of common knowledge. Almost all of 
them are marked by original thought, and many of them contain demonstrations 
or aperQus of considerable scientific value." — Pall Mall Gazette. 

"Thechapteis range from such siibjects as science and spiritualism to the 
consumption of smoke. They include a dissertation on iron filings in tea, and 
they discuss the action of frost on water-pipes and on building materials. The 
volume begins with an article on the fuel of the. sun, and before it is concluded 
t deals with Count Rumford's cooking stoves. '^All these subjects, and a great 
many more, are treated in a pleasant, informative manner. Mr. Williams knows 
what he is talking about, and he says what he" ha-^ to say in such a way as to 
prevent any possible misconception. The book will be prized by all who desire 
to have sound information on such subjects as those with wliich it deals."— 
Scotsman. - ■ , _ 

"To the scientific world Mr. Williams is best known by his solar studies, 
but here be is not writing so much for scientists as for the general public. It has 
been the aim of his life to popularise science, and his articles are so treated that 
his readers may become interested in them and find in their perusal a mental 
recreation." — su.iulaij-.ichool Chronicle. 

' We highly rec()inmend this most entertaining and vauable collection of 
paper.s. They combine clearness and simplicity, andsare not wanting in philoso- 
phy likewise.'"— 7'«Wf^ 



LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL, 

His Life, Times, Battlefields, and Contemporaries, by 
PAXTON HOOD, 

Author of '' Clu'ixtmas Ecans,''^ " Th(mia.^ Ca/'lijli-,^' " lioinance of 



JBeiarig- DSTo. 73 0± 



Biographij," »(v. 

12mo, handsome paper covers, 15 CENTS. 

This is a popular biography of the career of Oliver Cromwell, ^^ hich will be 
welcomed by those who are unable to pursue the sti.rriiig history of his life and 
times, in the elaboratfkVolume.s to which the stu^nf is at preseiit referred. 

For sale by all booksellers aud newsdealers, tir sent free of postage on 
receipt of price by the publishers. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., 

^ 14 and 16 Vesey St., New York. 



] OLIVER CROMWELL. 

jEtis life, times, battlefields, and 
contemporaries. 



PREFACE, 



It is only necessary, in introducing this work, to inform 
the reader as to the intentions of the Author in writing it, 
and that which will be found in the course of its perusal. It 
is, then, simply true that, so far as I am aware, there is no 
popular and portable volume like that which I now present. 
Far more eloquent pages have been written vindicating the 
great Protector and his work — far more archaeological pages 
the result of painstaking researches into the unexplored recesses 
and hiding-places of old documents. The Lives of Cromwell 
it would not be profitable to enumerate on this page — large 
and small, good, bad, and indijjferent. Of these, I believe I 
have seen the greater number, but I have not seen one which 
answers the end proposed by this volume — that is, to set forth 
in a compendious manner, accessible to any person not pos- 
sessed of too much time for wading through many or large 
volumes, the great Protector's claims. If I am told that this 
is a needless work to attempt after the noble epic of Carlyle, 
I may be permitted to say that my slight volume may serve 
to whet the appetite for the patient study of the lines of that 
great runic Saga or song. 

Further, I have attempted, which no slight comprehensive 
biography has done before, to set forth some account of those 
great contemporaries of Cromwell, some knowledge of whose 
lives is necessary, as their names must inevitably appear in 
connection with his, and who therefore at once illustrate the 
great hero's work, while their works also receive illustration 
from his character and career. I would not have the reader 
expect too much ; but if he appreciate this volume according to 
its Author's intention, it will be found to be, he trusts, neither 
uninteresting nor unuseful. Always let it be remembered 
that, boastful as this age is of its attainments in freedom of 
thought and liberty of conscience, even the most prominent 
agitators for such claims in our day have from Oliver Crom- 
well much yet to learn. 

PAXTON HOOD. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. PAGB 

Introductory.— Conflictiag Theories of Cromwell's Life, .... 7 

CHAPTER II. 
Ancestry, Family, and Early Days 19 

CHAPTER III. 
Episode. — Contemporaries : Sir John Eliot, 39 

CHAPTER IV. 
Cromwell, " The Lord of the Fens," and First Appearance in Parliament, . 63 

CHAPTER V. 
Episode. — Contemporaries : John Pym, 73 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Training of the Ironsides 76 

CHAPTER VII. 
Episode. — Contemporaries : John Hampden, 84 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Battle of Marston "Moor, go 

CHAPTER IX. 
Episode. — Contemporaries : Prince Rupert, " . io3 

CHAPTER X. 
The Battle of Naseby, . . 106 

CHAPTER XI. 
Cromwell in Ireland, . . X13 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Battle of Dunbar 117 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Cromwell at Worcester, and the Romance of Boscobel, 13a 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Cromwell the Usurper, 141 

CHAPTER XV. 
Cromwell the Protector 149 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Foreign Policy and Power of Cromwell, iCa 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Last Days of Cromwell, 176 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Epilogue. — Contemporaries : Sir Harry Vane, 184 

APPENDIX. 

I. The Farmer of St. Ives, . . . , - 209 

II. The Battle of Dunbar, 211 

III. The Martyrdom of Vauz , , 214 



INTRODUCTORY. 



CHAPTER I. 

CONFLICTING THEORIES OF CROMWELL^S LIFE. 

In one of those stately old folio histories in which our fore- 
fathers wrote the chronicles of England more than a century 
since, it was the wont of our dear old nurse, who supplied the 
place of a mother to us, to permit us to look^ when the rare 
occasion came round on which we were rewarded because we 
had behaved somewhat better than usual. But well do we re- 
member, as we looked at the full-length portraits of the kings, 
and from these full-length portraits derived sometimes a better 
idea of the men than from the pages of the letterpress — mid- 
way through the book we came to a portrait that puzzled us : 
it stood opposite the page headed, " Interregnum — Common- 
wealth." Yes, there stood a rough, robust being, without a 
crown, and yet with a most ominous hat upon his head, a 
broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned hat, like that we had 
seen on the heads of witches : and we could not but say 
to our old nurse, "What does he here ? " Our old nursfe was 
a woman, therefore a Royalist and Conservative. Moreover, 
she was very old, and her memory touched the generation 
whch had heard Cromwell talked about. From her we gath- 
ered that the reason why this broad-hatted person stood there 
was iDecause he was a very badly-behaved character, and 
would on no account be induced to take his hat off, even 
before his king. We tried to make it out ; the story was 
very dark to us. But the son of our nurse was a very fine 
and thoughtful man'; and when to him we used to say, " Why 
does he stand there with only a hat on ? Why has everybody 
else a crown, and he no crown ? " then he would tell us that 
he believed that there was more in his head beneath a hat 
than in those of any of the other kings who wore a crown, 
and that he was more king-like than all the kings. Thus our 
historical apprehensions were confused — as many wiser heads 



g OLIVER CROMWELL. . 

have been — at the commencement of our studies ; and even 
from our very earliest days we stumbled, and became perplex- 
ed, over the two theories of Cromwell's character. 

For it may be, perhaps asserted, that the variety of opinion 
with reference to the character of Cromwell is almost as diversi- 
fied as ever, although the collection of his letters and speeches 
by Thomas Carlyle has done so much to set him forth in a fair 
and honorable light, for which even those most enthusiastic 
for the career he represented were scarcely prepared. And 
it can not be doubted that the estimate of his character will 
always be formed, not merely from sympathy with a certain 
set of opinions, but even more from that strange, occult, and 
undefinable sentiment which, arising from peculiarity of tem- 
perament, becomes the creator of intellectual and even moral 
appreciation. Hence there are those to whom, whatever may 
be the amount of evidence for his purity, Cromwell can only 
be hateful ; while there are others, again, to whom, even rf 
certain flaws or faults of character appear in him, he can only 
be admirable. It is very interesting to notice the varied 
estimates which have been formed of this great man, even 
within the present, or within this and the immediately pre- 
ceding generation. 

Robert Southey, for instance, a pleasant and venerable 
name in recent English letters, wrote a life of Cromwell to 
sustain his theory of the great Protector's character. To him 
Cromwell was "the most fortunate and least flagitious of 
usurpers ; he gained three kingdoms, the price which he paid 
for them was innocence and peace of mind. He left an im- 
perishable name, so stained with reproach, that notwithstand- 
ing the redeeming virtues which adorned him, it were better 
for him to be forgotten than to be so remembered, and in the 
world to come, — but it is not for us to anticipate the judg- 
ments, still less to limit the mercy, of the All-merciful." And 
then he continues, " Let us repeat that there is no portion of 
history in which it so behooves an Englishman to be thoroughly 
versed as in that of Cromwell's age." He says, indeed, that 
" Cromwell's good sense and good nature would have led him 
to govern equitably and mercifully, to promote literature, to 
cherish the arts, and to pour wine and oil into the wounds of 
the nation ; " and he adds that " -the dangers to which he was 
exposed alone prevented him from carrying put all his 
wishes." * To Southey, Cromwell was hypocritical, always 
looking out for himself ; he was conscious of a guilty ambi- 

♦ Southey's " Life of Cromwell," p. 77. 



CONFLICTING THEORIES OF CROMWELVS LIFE. 9 

tion, he knew that he 'was doing wrong through the whole 
process of the struggle. He felt that he was a traitor, he 
knew that monarchy, aristocracy, and episcopacy were essen- 
tial to the well-being of the country ; he overthrew them, and 
yet he sought in some sense to retain their images, although 
he had got rid of the things. He committed a great crime, 
he attained to the possession of sovereign power by means 
little less guilty than Macbeth ; but he dared not take the 
crown, and he dared not confer it upon the young Charles 
Stuart, because he knew the young man would never forgive 
his father's death, and if he could he would be altogether un- 
worthy to wear his father's crown. What would not Crom- 
well have given, says Southey, whether he looked to this 
world or the next, if his hands had been clean of the king's 
blood ! Such, in brief, was the portrait it pleased Robert 
Southey to portray — such was his theory of Cromwell's life. 
Of the life of Cromwell by John Forster it is more difficult 
to speak. He never withdrew his life of Cromwell, never for- 
mally announced his dissent from the doctrine and theory of 
Cromwell's character contained in his " Lives of the Statesmen 
of the Commonwealth." We may fairly believe that this doc- 
trine is still held by multitudes whose general opinions as to 
the Long Parliament, and the possibility of the establishment 
of a republic, are in unison with Mr. Forster's. With Robert 
Southey, Cromwell was a traitor to Charles I. ; with Mr. Fors- 
ter, in his " Lives of the Statesmen," he was a traitor to the 
cause of civil and religious liberty. Cromwell commenced 
his career in earnest and faithful love of liberty, certainly 
with a faithful determination, a sense of righteousness in his 
strong insubordination against tyranny. He was a man of 
singular intellect, sincerely religious, but his religious nature 
was wrought upon by a temperament almost hypochondriacal. 
His shrewdness soon enabled him to see the probable issues 
of the struggle ; his force of character soon elevated him to 
be the foremost man in it. Knowing, perhaps, nothing of 
Machiavelli, he became far greater and more perfect than 
Machiavelli himself as a deep and designing deceiver, full of 
contrivances. As his personal ambition grew more and more 
within him, he grasped at the shadow of personal authority ; but 
as he did so, and seemed to become possessed of the power at 
which he aimed, the means of government eluded him, or 
crumbled in his grasp, and difficulties and perplexities 
accumulated around him. The doctrine of Mr. Forster, 
in the work to which we refer, appears to be that Cromwell 



10 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

was not so much untrue to himself, considering the 
complicated weft of his character, as that he was untrue to 
those great men, his friends, with whom he had wrought, and 
untrue to those principles for which he and they had struggled. 
He lived a life of torment, not because he had killed the king, 
not because he had been a traitor to the royal cause, but 
because he had been a traitor to his friends and principles. 
The day of death, therefore, to Cromwell was, not less than 
his great days at Worcester and Dunbar, " his fortunate day," 
because it released his entangled spirit from its cares. Such 
was Mr. Forster's Cromwell, as portrayed in 1840. 

Another, and a far inferior portrait, was attempted some 
years since by M. Guizot, the ex-minister of France. Judg- 
ing from that great historian's lectures on the Civilization of 
Europe, it might have been supposed he would have taken a 
broad and eminently satisfactory view of the career of Crom- 
well. It is, in fact, the least satisfactory ; and he contrived to 
delineate a really inferior man, a great man, but enamored 
of the world's substantial greatness. The business of his life 
was to arrive at government and to maintain himself in it ; and 
all who threw any bar or hinderance in his way were his ene- 
mies, and all whom he could use to that end were his friends, 
and they were his only friends. Hence, to substitute for a 
weak House of Stuart a strong House of Cromwell was the 
noblest aim of the Protectorate ; and he failed because, says 
M. Guizot, " God does not grant to the great men who have 
set on disorder the foundations of their greatness, the power 
to regulate at their pleasure and for centuries, even ac- 
cording to their better desires, the government of nations." 
Guizot does not refuse to pay his meed of homage and justice 
to Cromwell ; but he seems to have been unable to conceive 
a great idea of the Protector's ends. In his opinion Crom- 
well was thoroughly conscious of the weakness by which he 
was smitten as the punishment of his own acts, and, feeling 
about in all directions for some prop on which he could lean 
for support, he selected liberty of conscience. Resigning 
the name of king, it was impossible for him to retain kingly 
authority. He had arrived at a slippery height, on which to 
stand still was impossible — there was no alternative but to 
-mount higher or fall ; and therefore < he died in the fullness 
of his power, though sorrowful — sorrowful " not only because 
he must die, but also, and above all, because he must die 
without having attained his true and final purpose." It is 
impossible not to perceive that M. Guizot has, in his theory 



CONFLICTING THEORIES OF CROMIVELVS LIFE. ii 

of Cromwell's character, delineated the Government, weak 
and selfish, of Loiiis Philippe, of which, in its fall, he was the 
minister. Men are usually unable to conceive a loftier 
public ideal than their own realization ; and such is the 
Cromwell of Guizot. 

But in justice to Mr. John Forster, it must be said that he 
reviewed in a very able paper, entitled, " Cromwell, and the 
Civil Wars of England," in the Edinburgh Review^ this deline- 
ation of M. Guizot, and sufficiently exhibited the unfaithful- 
ness of the humiliating portrait ; for since his publication of 
the *' Lives of the Statesmen " had appeared the great collec- 
tion and commentary of Carlyle, and it may be thought that 
this publication sets the character of Cromwell in a niche of 
honorable security and rest forever. " Suppose," said Eliet 
Warburton, in his " Rupert and the Cavaliers," apologizing 
for the shameless perfidy revealed in the letters and corre- 
spondence of Charles I. — "suppose all the letters of the- 
crafty Cromwell had been discovered, what a revelation we 
should then have had ! " Well, '"Jromwell's letters have all at 
length been discovered and bor .id together, and their publi- 
cation has been the best vindi' ation of the consistent integ- 
rity and healthful whole-hear^ dness of the man. According 
to Carlyle, the faith of Cromwell never rested on any doubt- 
ful or insecure foundations. Whoever else might forsake 
him, hope and faith never deserted him. He never consented 
to take part in any public affairs upon any compulsion less 
strong than that of conscience. He was guided by superior 
instinct and the practical good sense of a man set apart by 
God to govern. He had no premeditated plan or programme 
to which to conform. On the other hand, his principles were 
never to seek. He saw the drift of circumstances, but he 
was nevertheless to guide them, to use and control them, for 
the good of all. He had no personal ambition ; he was dis- 
tracted by no fear, dazzled by no honor. Southey's Cromwell 
was full of penitence for his treason against Charles. Fors- 
ter's was full of penitence for his treason against the repub- 
lican cause. Guizot's Cromwell was full of sorrow on 
account of his failure in clutching at sovereignty and found- 
ing a dynasty. The real Cromwell, according to Carlyle, has 
no penitence of any kind, no sorrow, save for the sorrow and 
sin, the sad heir-looms of our race. He was the great cham- 
pion of the Puritan cause, a sworn soldier, to defend tha 
rights of civil and spiritual freedom ; not to protect the 
interests of a party, but, so far as he could, to throw a shield 



12 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

over all ; having only a zeal for what he honestly believed to 
be God's truth ; one of those rare souls who could lay upon 
itself the lowliest and the loftiest duties ; a dutiful son ; for a 
large part of his life a quiet country gentleman ; a tender 
husband, a tender father ; a daring political leader ; a great 
soldier; a man who knew men, and who could, as in his 
dealings with the subtle Mazarin, while preserving his own 
integrity, twist subtle statesmen to his pleasure ; at last a 
powerful sovereign, so living, praying, dying ; no hypocrite, 
no traitor, but a champion and martyr of the Protestant and 
Puritanical faith. Such is the Cromwell of Thomas Carlyle, 
and such is the Cromwell of the following pages. But thus 
it is that the variety of opinion as to the character and 
motives of this singular man seem to call from time to time 
for such resettings as may enable readers to obtain and form 
a clear idea for themselves of his character. 

We can not readily find the instance of another personage 
in history whose acts and memory have been the subjects of 
such conflicting theories as those of Cromwell. The unphi- 
losophical and paradoxical verdict of Hume, the historian of 
England, that he was a fanatical hypocrite, may now be 
dismissed ; we suppose that by all parties it is dismissed, 
with the contempt to which it is only entitled, to the limbo 
to which it properly belongs, with many other of the verdicts 
this writer ventured to announce in his history. Hume's 
character as an historian has not only been long since 
impeached, but, by Mr. Brodie,* reliance upon its veracity 
has been entirely destroyed ; and even the Quarterly Review 
many years since distinctly showed in how many instances 
his prejudices have permitted him to distort evidence, and 
even to garble documents. And it was especially the case 
when writing concerning Charles I. and Cromwell, that " he 
drew upon his imagination for his facts, and prejudices for his 
principles." It is very remarkable, however, that men, emi- 
nent for discrimination and judgment, well read in the story 
of the times, and in the interest of v»'hose opinion it seemed 
the very memory of such a man as Cromwell was involved, 
spoke of him and his actions with a kind of bated breath, as 
if they feared to incur some penalty in public opinion, by too 
laudatory an utterance of his name. We think of such writers 
as William Orme, the more than respectable author of the 

* " A History of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles I. to the Res- 
toration, etc., etc.; including a particular examination of Mr. Hume's statements 
relative to the character of the English government." By George Brodie, Esq., 
Advocate. 4 vols. 1822. 



CONFLICTING THEORIES OF CROMWELVS LIFE, 13 

lives of John Owen and Richard Baxter ; he speaks of Crom- 
well as one of whom it is difficult to speak with candor and 
justice. He says that if " to unmingled praise he is by no 
means entitled, unqualified censure is equally undeserved ; " 
and he very oddly goes on to remark, that " he did much to 
promote the glory of his country ; and if not a religious man 
himself, he yet promoted religion in others, and was evidently 
the friend of religious liberty at home and abroad. If he did 
not always act as he ought, it can scarcely be denied that few 
men who have grasped the rod of power has used it with so 
much moderation, and so generally for the good of others, as 
Oliver Cromwell." The tone of Henry Rogers, in his life 
of John Howe, is precisely the same. He admits that 
" Cromwell had committed crimes "(!), but he " does not think 
that his fanaticism actually perverted his moral judgment " (!), 
although " he was quite conscious that they were crimes 
which he had committed," (!) And the remarks of these two 
excellent writers occur in their attempts to solve the singular- 
mystery that Cromwell was so unquestionably attached to 
men so eminently holy as John Howe and John Owen, that 
he sought their friendship, and would have them present with 
him in his palace. 

This tone of remark has been long since dropped ; and among 
illustrious English writers, it is singular, perhaps, that even 
many years before Carlyle's magnificent vindication, Macau- 
lay had, in his own eloquent and glowing style, as dispassion- 
ately as heartily, set forth the character of the great Protector 
in his blaze of eloquent language. He says : " The ambition 
of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have 
coveted despotic power. He, at first, fought sincerely and 
manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it till it had 
deserted its duty. But even when thus placed by violence at 
the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He 
gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which 
had, at that time, been known to the world. For himself, he 
demanded indeed the first place in the Commonwealth, but 
with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder 
or an American president. He gave to Parliament a voice in 
the appointment of ministers, and left it to the whole legislative 
authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enact- 
ments ; and he did not require that the chief magistracy should 
be hereditary in his family. Thus far, if the circumstances of 
the time and the opportunities which he had for aggrandizing 
himself be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparisou 



14 OLiV£:R CkOMWELL, 

with Washington and Bolivar." And our readers surely re- 
member what ought to be a well-known passage, in which Ma- 
caulay prophesies that " truth and merit concerning Cromwell 
would at last prevail ; cowards, who had trembled at the very 
sound of his name — tools of office, who had been proud of the 
honor of lackeying his coach, might insult him in loyal 
speeches and addresses — a fickle multitude might crowd to 
shout and scoff round the gibbeted remains of the greatest 
prince and soldier of the age ; but when the Dutch cannon start- 
led an effeminate tyrant in his own palace — when the conquests 
which had been won by the armies of Cromwell were sold to 
pamper the harlots of Charles — when Englishmen were sent to 
fight under foreign banners against the independence of Europe 
and the Protestant religion, many honest hearts swelled in secret 
at the thought of one who had never suffered his country to be 
ill-used by any but himself. It must indeed have been difficult 
for any Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France saunter- 
ing through his harem, yawning and talking nonsense, or be- 
slobbering his brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin 
affection, without a respectful and tender remembrance of him 
before whose genius the young pride of Louis and the veteran 
craft of Mazarin had stood rebuked — who had humbled Spain 
on the land and Holland on the sea, and whose imperial voice 
had arrested the sails of the Libyan pirates and the persecuting 
fires of Rome. Even to the present day his character, though 
constantly attacked and scarcely ever defended, is popular with 
.the great body of our countrymen." These eloquent words of 
the great essayist are simply true ; and in fact, the faith avowed 
by Macaulay was endorsed and demonstrated by the great vin- 
dication in the publication of the letters and speeches by 
Thomas Carlyle ; but we believe that through all the years that 
have elapsed since the great Protector died, there has been an 
instinctive sense in the heart of the English people that his 
name would be cleared from all mists and calumnies, and know 
a brilliant resurrection ; while we suppose it is true a thousand- 
fold now, as compared with the time when Macaulay penned 
his eulogy, that his character is popular with the great body of 
our countrymen. 

And yet, is it now a less difficult thing to bring before our 
readers with some vividness that strange and surely wraith- 
like form of robust yet mysterious majesty, which rises to our 
vision in the later twilight of English story ? Like the patron 
saint of England, St. George of Cappadocia — he of the dragon 
«--Cromwell seems a strangely mythic character. In an age 



CONFLICTING THEORIES OF CROMWELVS LIFE, 15 

when real kings were dying or dead, and sham kings were 
flying from their own weakness beneath the outspread shadowy 
wings of Right Divine ; when, out of the sea and scenery of 
confusion, beasts rose and reigned, like hydras, seven-headed 
and seven-horned ; when every man sought to do what was 
right in his own eyes ; when the prisons were full of victims, 
when the churches were full of mummeries — there rose a 
wraith, unexpected, unprecedented in the history of the nation, 
perhaps of the world, and said, " Well, then, you must settle 
your account with me ! " That quaint, broad-hatt^d majesty 
of our old folio histories was, without a doubt, the Pathfinder 
of his nation in that age. " Pray, Mr. Hampden," said Sir 
Philip Warwick, when Cromwell had been rather more forci- 
ble than usual, " who is that sloven who spoke just now ; for 
I see he is on our side, by his speaking so warmly." " That 
sloven whom you see before you, and who hath no ornament 
in his speech — that sloven, I say, if we should ever come to a 
breach with the king, which God forbid — that sloven, I say, 
will be, in that case, the greatest man in England." For he 
was a true Pathfinder. He had a gift of simplicity as great as 
that finest creation of the American novelist, and an insight 
of wonderful power ; as one set down in the depth of a wilder- 
ness, where there seems to be no way, and is able to discover 
the thin, faint trail, and to detect the burning eyes of the 
savage where no life seemed to rustle beneath the tree. This 
was his gift : prescience beyond the lot of mortals. This, like 
the scabbard of the good sword Excalibur, was more to him 
than the sword itself ; its hilt was armed with eyes. 

Vain, then, is the employment to ask : Is this man great ? 
— and vain to contest his sovereignty and his grandeur. Very 
vain. You say, indeed, " What do you here, farmer that you 
are ; what do you here in the gallery of kings ? " Thus when 
we have climbed old Helvellyn, and reached the height of its 
three thousand feet, we found ourselves amid a sanhedrim of 
crows and choughs — a sublime council of ravens ; and they 
said to the old hill, " Art thou larger than we ? See, we 
perch upon thee, and peck on thee. Why art thou here ? " 

Sublimely stood the old mountain, the lightning-scathed 
crags in his sides bearing testimony to the thunder-strokes of 
ages, and seeming to say, " Let it suffice : I um here." It is 
the same with Oliver. He rises in the English story like a 
Helvellyn, or a sublime Peak of Teneriife, and says, " Let it 
suffice: I am here I ^^ 

A few years since it would have sounded too bold if a 



i6 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

writer, in introducing the great hero of the English Common- 
wealth to his readers, intimated his determination to attempt, 
in defending him, to throw new light round his position, to 
plead for his right to a lofty place in human estimation, and 
to assert the honesty and integrity of his manhood, and the 
value and the worth of the great work he performed. To say 
this now is almost a matter of supererogation. The time has 
gone by when Oliver Cromwell needed any man's good word : 
the evidences of his life-long consistency of purpose, the gran- 
deur and durability of his legislative genius surround us on all 
hands. Gradually, from many quarters of a most opposite 
kind, proof has been accumulating. The wisest, who have 
been disposed to form an opinion adverse to the great English 
Protector, have confessed themselves compelled to pause 
before pronouncing ; others, again, have ransacked the ar- 
chives of state paper offices, the heaps of dingy family letters 
and scrolls, every shred of paper bearing Oliver's name that 
could be brought to light has been produced ; and the result 
is, that no name, perhaps, in all history stands forth so trans- 
parent and clear, so consistent throughout. It is the most 
royal name in English history, rivaling in its splendor that of 
Elizabeth, the Edwards, and the Henrys ; outshining the 
proudest names of the Norman, the Plantagenet, or the 
Tudor. 

Doubtless, as we have often heard, great men are the out- 
births of their time ; there is a providence in their appearance, 
they are not the product of chance ; they come, God-appointed, 
to do their work among men, and they are immortal till their 
work is done. We should not, perhaps, speak so much of 
the absolute greatness of the men of one age as compared 
with the men of another ; they are all equally fitted to the 
task of the day. Let the man who most hates the memory of 
Cromwell, ask not so much what the land and the law were 
with him, as what they must inevitably have been without him. 
Remove the leading man from any time, and you break the 
harmony of the time, you destroy the work of that age ; for an 
age can not move without its great men — they inspire it, they 
urge it forward, they are its priests and its prophets and its 
monarchs. The hero of a time, therefore, is the history of a 
time ; he is the focus where influences are gathered, and from 
whence they shoot out. It has been said that all institutions 
are the projected shadow of some great man, he has absorbed 
all the light of his time in himself ; perhaps he has not cre- 
ated, yet now he throws forth light from his name, clear, 



CONFLICTING THEORIES OF CROMWELVS LIFE. 17 

steady, practical light, that shall travel over a century; his 
name shall be the synonym of an epoch, and shall include all 
the events of that age. Thus it is with Cromwell ; hence, 
very happily, the time of the Commonwealth has been called 
the Cromwelliad. 

But the sublime unconsciousness of this great spirit is the 
most leading characteristic indication of his greatness. The 
reader may remember what Cardinal de Retz said : *' M. de 
Bellivre," said the cardinal, " told me that he had seen and 
known Cromwell in England. And he said to me one day, 
that one never mounted so high as when one did not know 
where one was going." Whereupon says the cardinal, " You 
know I have a great horror of Cromwell ; but however great 
a man may think him, I add to this horror contempt^ for if that 
be his opinion, he seems to mc to be a fool." But Cromwell 
was right. This is, indeed, in all things true grandeur : the 
unconscious is alone complete. The eminently tricky cardi- 
nal did not know the great flights of an unconscious spirit, 
and how surely the measure of the one is, in great souls, 4:he 
height of the other. No doubt Cromwell was amazed at the 
lofty elevation to which he ascended ; for he commenced his 
public career without any plan ; he threw himself, and his for- 
tunes, and his life, into the scale against the king, and on the 
side of the people. He was at that time a plain country yeo- 
man. We do not believe that he had any ambition other than 
to serve the cause with a brave pure heart. Could he, whose 
unnoticed days had been passed by a farmer's ingle, see 
gleaming before his eyes a crown, which he might refuse ? 
Could he, who had spent his later years in following the 
plow, dream that he should draw the sword, only to find 
himself at last the greatest general of his own age, and one 
of the greatest soldiers of any age ? Well might he say, 
'.' One?iever mounts so high as whefi one does 7iot hiow where one 
is going.'^ It is the sublime of human philosophy and charac- 
ter to be able to say this ; it is faith in Providence and in 
destiny alone which can say this. When he first entered on 
the struggle, his thought, no doubt, was to^fulfill a duty or two 
upon the field and in the senate, and then go back to his farm. 
He little thought that he was to be the umpire of the whole 
contest. 

Certain it is that we are to seek for what Cromwell was in 
after life, in those early days of his history. Some writers, 
Guizot among the rest, have said that he adopted theories of 
liberty of conscience, and so forth, to suit his ambition and 



iS OLIVER CROMWELL, 

his success. Not he ! He was for years, before the breaking 
out of civil war, substantially all that he was after. When he 
entered upon his career of public life, he had no principles to 
seek ; he had found them long since, and he acted upon them 
invariably. Nor can we perceive that he adopted any new 
principles, or expedients, through the whole of his future 
career. Cromwell was all that we include in the term Puritan. 
His whole public life was the result of that mental experience 
by which his faith was molded. In him there was a pro- 
found reverence for the law of God. He had an instinctive 
apprehension of order. To disfranchise, to rout and put to 
flight the imbecilities of anarchists ; such was his work. A 
sworn soldier of the Decalogue was he. Say that he read 
with keen vividness into men's hearts and men's purposes ; 
well, he did so, as any man may do, by the light of high 
intelligent principles within him. In many things, we do not 
doubt, he much misinterpreted texts of the Divine Book.' 
Perhaps he was too much a *' Hebrew of the Hebrews." 
Some do not see how a man can be faithfully a Christian 
man and also a soldier ; but if he will be a soldier, then we do 
not see how he can fulfill a soldier's duty better than by look- 
ing into the Old Testament. We see plainly that we shallnot 
know CromwelVs character and deeds unless we acquaint our- 
selves with CromwelVs theology. 

His theology made the life of his home in old farmer days 
at St. Ives. His theology guided his impressions of men and 
events. His theology went with him to the army, and kin- 
dled there his heroism, and, if you will, his enthusiasm. His 
theology ruled his character in the senate and on the throne. 
It was not merely his speech, but deep, far beneath his speech 
lay his great thoughts of God ; and unless you understand 
his inner depth of vital conviction, you will have no compre- 
hension of the man. His mind was fostered from the unseen 
springs of meditation, and from reading in that literature, 
unquestionably the most glorious in magnificence and wealth 
we have had. In our age we have little religious literature : 
the mighty folios in which the Puritan fathers taught have 
dwindled down to the thin tracts in which our friend the Rev. 
Octavian Longcloth, or his curate, the Rev. Dismal Dark- 
man, mix their acidulated milk and water for weak stomachs. 
Far different was the theology of Cromwell and the writers 
of Cromwell's age. Manton, himself one of the greatest of 
these writers, says Cromwell, had a large and well-selected 
library. Many of our most famous pieces were then unwrit- 



ANCESTR r, FAMIL F, AND EARL Y DA YS, 19 

ten ; but there were some pieces of Smith, Caudray, Adams, 
Owen, Goodwin, and Mede, and the earlier fathers, and 
Calvin, and Hooker, and Herbert's lyrics. We think such 
were the men with whom Cromwell walked and mused, and 
whose writings shed light into his soul. 

Sir John Goodricke used to relate a remarkable anecdote, 
which we should probably assign to the siege of Knaresbor- 
ough Castle, in 1644, and which was told him when a boy, by 
a very old woman, who had formerly attended his mother in 
the capacity of midwife. " When Cromwell came to lodge in 
our house, in Knaresborough," said she, " I was then but a 
young girl. Having heard much talk about the man, I looked 
at him with wonder. Being ordered to take a pan of coals 
and air his bed, I could not, during the operation, forbear 
peeping over my shoulder several times to observe this 
extraordinary person, who was seated at the far side of the 
room untying his garters. Having aired the bed, I went out, 
and shutting the door after me, stopped and peeped through 
the keyhole, when I saw him rise from his seat, advance to 
the bed, and fall on his knees, in which attitude I left him for 
some tim.e. When returning again, I found him still at 
prayer ; and this was his custom every night so long as he 
stayed at our house ; from which I concluded he must be a 
good man ; and this opinion I always maintained afterward, 
though I heard him very much blamed and exceedingly 
abused." 

No ! we should say there would be no shaking this 
woman's faith in him. To her he would appear as what he 
was — genuine and transparent. How many of Cromwell's 
maligners, how many of us writers and readers, would stand 
the test of the keyhole ?_| 



CHAPTER II. 

ANCESTRY,. FAMILY, AND EARLY DAYS. 

It can not be an unimportant thing to glance at the ancestry 
of a powerful man, and that of Cromwell is very curious, more 
like that of the Tudors, whom he so much resembles, than like 
that of any other royal name of England. He was descended 
from a Celtic stock by his mother's side. He was a ninth 



20 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

cousin of Charles I.* Elizabeth Steward, Mrs. Robert Crom- 
well, the mother of Oliver, was descended from Alexander, the 
Lord High Steward of Scotland — the ancestor of the whole 
family of the Stewarts. This is one of the most singular coin- 
cidences occurring in history ; but the family of Cromwell's 
father was from Wales. He was the second son of Sir Henry 
Cromwell, himself eldest son and heir to Sir Richard Williams, 
alias Cromwell, who, as the issue of Morgan Williams, by his 
marriage with a sister of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, Earl of 
Essex, assumed — like his father — the name of Cromwell. 
Morgan ap Williams is said to have derived his family from a 
noble lineage, namely, that of the Lords of Powys and Cardi- 
gan, who flourished during the period of the conquest. But 
of this we are not herald sufficient to declare the truth ; how 
ever, all Welsh blood is royal or noble. The elevation of the 
Cromwell family is to be dated from the introduction of Rich- 
ard Williams to the Court of Henry VHI., by Thomas Crom- 
well, the son of Walter Cromwell, some time a blacksmith, and 
afterward a brewer at Putney, in Surrey, and a great favorite 
with the bluff old Hal. Richard Williams appears to have 
been — and he was — one of the few royal favorites who did not 
lose his head .as the penalty for his sovereign's favoritism. 
We have an account of a great tournament, held by King 
Harry, where Richard acquitted himself right gallantly. 
There the king knighted him, and presented him with a dia- 
mond ring, exclaiming " Formerly thou was my Dick, but 
now thou art my Diamond," and bidding him for the future 
wear such a one in the fore gamb of the demi-lion in his crest, 
instead of a javelin as before. The arms of Sir Richard, with 
this alteration, were ever afterward borne by the elder branch 
of the family ; and by Oliver himself, on his assuming the 
Protectorship, though previously he had borne the javelin. 
Henry himself, it will be remembered, was of Welsh descent 
and he strongly recommended it to the Welsh to adopt the 
mode of most civilized nations, in taking family names, instead 
of their manner of adding'their father's and, perhaps, their 
grandfather's name to- their own Christian one, as Morgan ap 
Williams, or Richard ap Morgan ap Williams. 

Great was the munificence and large the possessions of the 
Cromwell family. Our Oliver, indeed, appears to have been 
poor enough for so 2;reat a connectioD ; but his uncle. Sir 

* For a stream of Cromwell's ancestry, and proof of this, see Forster's *' Lives of 
British Statesmen," vol. vi. pp. 35-307. But more explicitly in '' The Cromwell 
Fanuly" of Mark Noble. 



ANCESTR K FA MIL K, AND EARL Y DA YS. 21 

Oliver, inherited all the estates of his ancestor, Sir Richard ; 
and these included many of those wealthy monasteries and 
nunneries for the escheatment and confiscation of which 
Thomas Cromwell has become so famous, constituting him 
Malleus Monachorum. the " Hammerer of Monasteries," as 
Oliver has been called Malleus Monarchorum, or the " Ham- 
merer of Kings and Thrones." 

Hinchinbrook, near Huntingdon, was the residence of Sir 
Oliver. There, no doubt, he kept up a magnificent old Eng- 
lish cheer. Beneath his gateway he received, and in his halls 
he entertained, three English monarchs. Elizabeth, when she 
left the University of Cambridge, paid him a visit ; King 
James I. was entertained by him several times ; as was also 
Charles I. But the great festivity of his life was his reception 
of James on his way to London from Edinburgh, when he suc- 
ceeded to the English throne. High feasting days were those 
at Hinchinbrook House. The king came in a kind of state ; 
Sir Oliver entertained all comers with the choicest viands and 
wines, and even the populace had free access to the cellars 
during His Majesty's stay. At his leaving Hinchinbrook, 
after breakfast, on the 29th of April, he was pleased to express 
his obligations to the baronet and his lady, saying to the former, 
with his characteristic vulgarity, "Marry, mon, thou hast 
treated me better than any one since I left Edinburgh ; " and 
an old chronicler remarks, " It is more than probable, better 
than ever that prince was treated before or after ; " for it is 
said Sir Oliver at this time gave the greatest feast that had been 
given to a king by a subject. 

We shall not have occasion to refer to Sir Oliver again 
throughout this biography, and therefore we may close this 
notice of him by saying that he continued throughout his life 
loyal to the cause of king and cavalier. He obliged all his 
sons to serve in the Royalist army, and was ever more obnox- 
ious to the Parliamentarian cause than any person in his neigh- 
borhood. At last he was obliged to sell his seat of Hinchin- 
brook, and he retired to live in silence and quiet in Ramsey 
in the county of Huntingdon. His whole estates were seques- 
trated, but spared through the interposition and for the sake 
of his illustrious nephew. He never, however, courted the favor 
of Oliver, and no doubt was -heartily ashamed of him. The 
losses he sustained from his loyalty were so great that, as the 
shades of the evening of life closed round him, they found him 
deep iri pecuniary difficulties ; and he is said to have been buried 
in the evening of the day on which he died, in the chancel of 



22 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

Ramsey church, in order to prevent his body being seized for 
debt.* 

But although we linger thus long upon the ancestry and re- 
lationships of Oliver (perhaps it may be thought too long), it 
must not be supposed that we do so from any foolish effort to 
disconnect him from the ranks of toil and labor; The truth 
appears to be that Mr. Robert Cromwell, the brother of Sir 
Oliver, was by no means his brother's equal in either position 
or wealth. The honors of the family would be, of course, re- 
flected upon him, but his income never exceeded, indepen- 
dently, ;^3oo per annum, and it is certain that he sought to in- 
crease his fortune by engaging in trade, He appears to have 
been a brewer, but he was also a justice of the peace for 
Huntingdon. He represented the same town in Parliament 
in the thirty-fifth of Elizabeth ; and he was one of the com- 
missioners for draining the fens. He appears to have been 
a plain and simple country gentleman ; but it is probable his 
intercourse with the world had enabled him to give to his son 
views of men and things which might materially influence his 
impressions in after life. 

Oliver Cromwell, one of the most illustrious captains on the 
field and legislators in the cabinets of any age, was born at 
Huntingdon, April 25th, 1599. 

In the region of the Fens, then, our English hero was reared ; 
a quiet, picturesque region, far removed from any bold or ex- 
citing scenery. There, now as then, the quiet waters of the 
v/inding Ouse pursue their way amid sedgy banks and stunted 
poplars and willows ; amid fields not so well drained as now, 
and amid scenes further removed than now they seem from the 
noise of the great world. There the mystery of life fell upon 
him ; and in rambles about Godmanchester, and Houghton, 
and VVarbois, and the Upper and Lower Hemingfords — all of 
them at that time having the reputation of being witch-haunted, 
and therefore under the atrocious visitations of Matthew Hop- 
kins — there, in these spots, Oliver found his sport-places and 
play-grounds, and there, no doubt, his young mind was haunted 
by strange dreams. We need not keep our readers with nar- 
rations as to how he was saved from drowning by one who 
wished afterward that he had let him drown ; how he wrestled 
with little Charles, Prince of Wales, as he came along that 
•way with his father, James I., and enjoyed the hospitality of 

♦The reader may recall one of the most charmfng- of the fmag-fnary conversations 
of Walter Savaee Landor as being between old Sir Oliver and his nephew and name- 
sake, beneath ue gateway of Ramsey Abbey. 



ANCESTRY, FAMILY, AND EARLY DAYS. 23 

Sir Oliver Cromwell, at Hinchinbrook ; how he was endan- 
gered and saved, in his childhood, from death by a monkey. 

*' His very infancy," says Noble, " if we believe what Mf. 
Audley, brother to the famous civilian, says he heard some 
old men tell his grandfather — was marked with a peculiar ac- 
cident, that seemed to threaten the existence of the future 
Protector ; for his grandfather. Sir Henry Cromwell, having 
sent for him to Hinchinbrook — near Huntingdon, the ancient 
family seat — when an infant in arms, a monkey took him 
from his cradle and ran with him upon the lead that covered 
the roofing of the house. Alarmed at the danger Oliver was 
in, the family brought beds to catch him upon, fearing the 
creature's dropping him down ; but the sagacious animal 
brought the ' Fortune of England ' down in safety ; so narrow 
an escape had he, who was doomed to be the Conqueror and 
Magistrate of the three mighty nations, from the paws of a 
monkey. He is also said to have been once saved from 
drowning by a Mr. Johnson, Curate of Cunnington ; a fact 
more credible, perhaps, for that the same worthy clergyman 
should at a future period, when Oliver was marching at the 
head of his troops through Huntingdon, have told him, 
that he * wished he had put him in, rather than have seen him 
in arms against the king : ' " the latter part of which story is 
probably a loyal but fabulous appendage tagged, after the 
Restoration, to the former. 

Anecdotes of the first days of men who have attained to 
any kind of command over their fellows are frequently im- 
ported ; they give a clue to the state of opinion about them dur- 
ing their lifetime. It is probable that most of such stories, 
although somewhat inflated in their tone, may yet have a fun- 
damental substance of truth and dramatic propriety. Thus 
there are a few tales told of our hero which do appear to be, 
in no slight degree, illustrative of his after life ; and thus we 
should expect it to be. Manhood is contained in boyhood ; 
do we not often echo the words of our poet, " the child is 
father to the man " .? We can not conceive Oliver inferior to 
his young comrades either in physical or mental prowess : he 
was, beyond all doubt, a burly little Briton, with large re- 
sources of strength ; and from a shrewd comprehension of 
things, whether iu sport or in school, and a musing, dreamy, 
half poetic (in those days), all enthusiastic temperament, was, 
no doubt, frequently carried far out of the reach of his play 
mates and companions. All childhoods are not cheerful, all 
childhoods are not exempt from care. Strong and sensitive 



24 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

natures are stamped with a wonderful precocity ; even in 
their cradles the future achievements, the prophecies of unper- 
formed actions, cross the path. Dim and undefined, like 
worlds not reahzed, their destiny rises before them like a 
painting on the mist, even in the very earliest of their years ; 
and Oliver was of that pecuUar temperament that it seemed 
necessary to believe that such a boyhood was his. 

He went to Huntingdon Free Grammar School, and the 
place we believe is still shown where he sat and studied his 
first lessons. Health, a scurrilous compiler of a Hfe of Crom- 
well, who has been handed down to future years by Carlyle 
under the patronymic of " Carrion Heath," has, with a laud- 
able zeal, chronicled the number of dovecotes robbed by our 
daring little Protector ; wdth a meanness of malice unequaled, 
he has recounted his adventures in breaking into orchards, 
and other such juvenile offenses. For our part, we do not 
doubt both his capabilities and disposition for such adven- 
tures. 

More interesting will it be for us to notice the various tradi- 
tions that have come down to us of the feats and appearances 
of those early days. Especially is it recorded that Charles I., 
when a child, was with his father, the king, at Hinchinbrook 
House, the seat of Sir Oliver, of whom w^e have made mention 
above ; he was then Duke of York. And that he should visit 
the old knight is very likely, as we do know that many times 
the hospitable gates were thrown open to the monarch and 
his family, either going to or returning from the north to the 
English capital. But upon this occasion the future monarch 
and future Protector met, and engaged each other in childish 
sport, in which Charles got the worst of it. 

For what fixed the attention of the lovers of prognostications 
in that and succeeding- ages, was that " the youths had not 
been long together before Charles and Oliver disagreed ; and, 
as the former was then as weakly as the latter was strong, it 
was no wonder that the royal visitant was worsted ; and Oli- 
ver, even at this age, so little regarded dignity, that he made 
the royal blood flow in copious streams from the prince's nose." 
" This," adds the author, " was looked upon as a bad presage 
for the king when the civil wars commenced." 

Certainly there is nothing unlikely or improbable in this 
anecdote. If Charles visited Hinchinbrook — and that he did 
frequently has all the certainty of moral evidence — he would 
surely meet young Oliver, and he would certainly not be in 
his cpTj^pany long, we may venture to assert, without a quar- 



ANCESTRY, FA MIL F, AND EARL V DA YS. 25 

rel ; haughty obstinacy and daring resolution — the weakness 
and effeminacy of a child of the Court, and the sturdy inde- 
pendence and strength of the little rustic farmer — ^^\^ould easily 
produce the consequences indicated in the story. 

The same writer relates as " more certain," and what Oliver 
himself, he says, " often averred, when he was at the height 
of his glory," that, on a certain night, in his childhood, he 
" saw a gigantic figure, which came and opened the curtains 
of his bed, and told him that he should be the greatest person 
in the kingdom, but did not mention the word ki7ig; and," 
continues the reverend narrator, " though he was told of the 
folly as well as wickedness of such an assertion, he persisted 
in it ; for which he was flogged by Dr. Beard, at the particular 
desire of his father; notwithstanding which, he would some- 
times repeat it to his uncle Stewart, who told him it was trai- 
torous to relate it." Different versions have been given of 
this tale. It even finds a place, with much other serious anti- 
monarchical matter, in what Lord Clarendon so intemperately 
(as the great Fox observed) called his " History of the Rebel- 
lion ;" but we dismiss it for the moment, again to recur to 
the pages of that indefatigable collector, Mark Noble. 

For yet another incident recorded of these years is connected 
with the performance of a comedy called Lmgua, attributed to 
Anthony Brewer, and celebrating the contest of the five senses 
for the crown of superiority, and discussing the pretensions of 
the tongue to be admitted as a sixth sense. It is certainly a 
proof of the admitted superiority of Oliver over his schoolfel- 
lows, that the principal character was awarded to him ; and 
truly there is something remarkable in the coincidence of some 
of his impersonations and the realities of his future life. In 
the character of Tactus^ or the sense of feeling, " The little 
actor came from his tiring-room upon the stage, his head encir- 
cled with a chapel of laurel. He stumbled over a crown pur- 
posely laid there, and, stooping down, he took it, and crowned 
himself. It is said — but how likely that such things should 
be said ! — that he exhibited more than ordinary emotion as he 
delivered the majestical words of the piece." Nor may we 
refuse to believe that his mind felt something of the import of 
the words he uttered : all unconscious as he was that he was 
uttering a prophecy connected with his own life ; and he 
would, perhaps, recur to them when, in after years, he came, 
from a position so lowly, to be so near to the neighborhood of 
a crown ; when the highest symbols of power were brought to 
his touch, and his name, lauded in poetry and oratory, alike by 



26 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

friends and parasites, was placed on the level of the Caesars 
and Alexanders, as he strode on from height to height of pride 
and power. 

Oliver had a very stern schoolmaster, and whatever may 
have been the necessity existing for it, Dr. Beard is said to 
have visited upon him a severity of discipline unusual even 
for those severe days. 

Thus we obtain glimpses of his early life : thus it comes be- 
fore us. He was learning then — learning in many and various 
ways — around the hearth at Huntingdon. By the winter fire- 
side he would hear the rumors from the great world of the 
Popish Gunpowder Plot ; he was six years old when the news 
of this would reach his father's house. He was eleven w'hen 
. Henry of Navarre, the defender of the Protestants of France, 
was assassinated. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, the intelligence of 
his death would be noted ; and the quiet and glorious end of 
the fine old martyr to Spanish gold and Spanish influence 
would make some impression, even upon the quiet dwellers of 
Huntingdonshire. We do not know his playmates: of one 
we have caught a dim shadow, a royal playmate, no match for 
our stubborn little hero. Another we may fancy with him in 
the playground, his cousin, John Hampden, five years older 
than Oliver ; kind, but firm, gentle, thoughtful, mild, he would 
temper the fiercer spirit. They certainly knew each other in 
those days, and played together. That surely is a s^ene on 
which artist and poet may linger, the two boys, John Hampden 
and Oliver Cromwell, together ! We attempt to follow them 
through their days of youth, their sports of the field ; and strive 
to imagine the two strrng, stately men — warrior^, legislators, 
representatives of English mind and opinion, disputants with 
a king — in their simple boyhood's life. 

We wonder at some things in CromweH's history. We 
wonder that in his after years, while his soul was so blessed by 
a large toleration, he so resolutely and intolerantly hated 
Romanism. We must remember, as we have already said, that 
when Oliver was six years old there came to his father's house 
in Huntingdon the news of the Gunpowder Plot; we must 
remember that a feline Jesuitism was sneaking over the whole 
of England, and round the courts of Europe and through its 
kingdoms ; we must remember that when he was only eleven 
years old the brave Henry of Navarre was murdered in the 
streets of Paris — fine defender of Protestantism that he was ! 
Pieces of news like these were calculated to sting a boy's mem- 
ory, and to remain there, and to leave a perpetual irritation. 



ANCESTRY, FAMIL F, AND EARL V DA VS, 27 

Popery was to be hated then ; — we now may afford to forgive 
what Popery has done. In that day it did not well comport 
with public safety to be so tranquil ; so Oliver listened as a 
boy, and treasured these things in his recollection, and when 
the time came — the day of wrath — he heaped up the wrath, 
and sought to set fire to the whole tawdry mass of error and 
corruption. 

Let us pause for a moment or two upon the days of Crom- 
well's boyhood • those, as we have seen, were the days when 
James I. was king ; probably, as we have said, the lad often 
saw him at the house of his uncle. Sir Oliver ; the sight would 
not be likely to enh;-:nce his conceptions of the dignity of the 
sovereign, as the tales he heard would be as little Ukely to in- 
crease his respect for kingly power. It will not be out of place 
here to devote a word or two to the delineation of the person 
and character of the fiist of the English Stewarts; for with 
him, unquestionably, those troubles began which Oliver, by and 
by, would be called upon to settle. 

There were many unfortunate circumstances which combined 
to bring about the unhappy doom of Charles I. He was un- 
fortunate in his own nature, in himself ; it was unhappy that 
one with a nature so weak, and a will so strong, should be 
called upon to fcce men and circumstances such as he found 
arrayed against him. But we have always thought the most 
unfortunate circumstance in the life of Charles to have been 
that he was the son of his father. The name of James I. has 
become, and speaking upon the best authority is, synonymous 
with every sentiment of contempt; it is quite doubtful 
whether a single feature of character, or a single incident in his 
history, can command unchallenged regard or respect : that 
about him which does not provoke indignation, excites laugh- 
ter. His conduct as the sovereign of his own country, of Scot- 
land — before he succeeded to the throne of England — was such 
as to awaken more than our suspicion, beyond doubt to arouse 
our abhorrence, lie has been handed down through history as 
a great investigatcr of the my.f.gr.-ies of king-craft; but the 
record of the cririinal trials of Scotland jeccr..?: t? show that he 
chiefly exercised his sagacity among th^se mysteries for the 
purpose of procuring vengeance on those monsters of iniquity 
who had sneered at his person or undervalued his abilities. 
Whenever his own person was reflected on, he followed the de- 
linquent like a panther prowling for his prey ; and, as Pitcairn 
has shown in his immense and invaluable work on the criminal 
trials of Scotland, he never failed in pursuing his victim to 



28 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

death. It is worth while to recite an instance oi t^vo : On the 
third of August, 1596, John Dickson, an Englishman, was in- 
dicted for uttering calumnious and slanderous speeches against 
the king. The amount of his offense was, that being drunk, 
he had allowed a boat he was managing to come in the way of 
one of the king's ordnance vessels, when, being called upon by- 
Archibald Gairdenar, one of his majesty's cannoneers, to give 
place to his majesty's ordnance, "he fyrst ansseriet, that he 
would nocht vyre his boit for king or kasard : and thairefter, 
maist proudlie, arrogantlie, shlanderouslie, and calumniouslie, 
callit his majestic ane bastard king : and that he was nocht 
worthie to be obeyit." The jury found him guilty, but quali- 
fied their verdict by admitting his drunkenness ; but their quali- 
fication did not avail — the poor fellow was hanged. Another 
case Mr. Pitciarn gives, of John Fleming, of Cohburn Path, 
who was indicted for uttering treasonable, blasphemous, and 
damnable speeches against the king. He appears to have lost 
a case in litigation : and on being asked why he uttered blas- 
phemous and horrible words concerning the king, he made this 
scornful and disdainful answer, "That were it not for the king 
and his laws, he would not have lost his lands ; and therefore 
he cared not for the king, for hanging wrould be the worst for 
it." He spoke like a prophet, he was hanged. But in 1609, 
Francis Tennant, merchant and burgess of Edinburgh, was in- 
dicted for writing slanderous words against the king, and he 
was sentenced to be taken to the market cross of Edinburgh, 
and his tongue cut out at the root ; then a paper should be 
affixed to his brow, bearing " that he is convict for forging and 
geveing out of certane vyld and seditious parcellis, detracting 
us and our maist nobill progenitouris ; and thairefter that he 
shall be takyn to the gallons, and hangit, ay quhill he be 
deid." By a merciful decree this audacious sinner was yet 
permitted to be hung with his tongue in his head. Another 
remarkable instance concerns an offender who had affixed 
upon one of the Colleges of Oxford some seditious words 
reflecting on the king, after he had attained to the English 
throne. The laws of England did not permit the hunting 
the delinquent, one Thomas Rose, to death ; so the king 
wrote to his faithful Privy Council of Scotland, informing them 
of the most unhandsome restrictions placed upon kingly 
power, soliciting their advice, and as the words had reflected 
upon the Scottish king and the Scottish nation, expressing 
his wish that the man should be tried in Scotland. To which 
from the Privy Council he received a gracious reply, inform- 



ANCESTRY FAMILY, AND EARLY DAYS, ag 

ing him that they would receive him, the prisoner, and com- 
mit him to the Iron House (by which name the cage was 
called in which desperate prisoners were confined previous to 
their execution), and continuing : " Oure opinioun is that he 
sal be hanged at the Mercatt-Croce of Edinburghe, and his 
heade affixt on one of the Portis. But in this we submit oure 
selffis to your maiesteis directioun ; quhairunto we sail con- 
forme our selffis." The poor fellow was hung. James was a 
firm believer in the divinity which doth hedge a king ; but it 
must seem something surprising that, however Scotland might 
bow down graciously to such follies, England should yield as 
compliantly to his will. His reply to his first counselors upon 
his arrival in England is well known : " Do I mak the 
Judges ? do I mak the Bishops ? then, Godis wauns ! I mak 
what likes me, law and gospel." Commenting upon this, 
John Forster, in his " Statesmen of England," says, " He was 
not an absolute fool, and little more can be said of him." It 
was the bluff Henry IV. of France who affixed to him the 
sobriquet, with its sly insinuation, that " undoubtedly he was 
Solomon — the son of Davids There was nothing in the 
appearance of this person which carried the presence of sov- 
ereignty along with the impudent arrogance of his audacious 
will. A contemporaiy describes him when, at the age of 
thirty-seven, he came to the English throne : " He was of 
middle stature, more corpulent through his clothes than in his 
body, yet fat enough ; his eye large, ever rolling after any 
stranger that came in his presence, insomuch as many, for 
shame, left tJie room as being out of countenance ; his tongue 
was too large for his mouth, and made him drink very 
uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into his cup 
at each side of his mouth ; his skin was as soft as taffeta sarse- 
net, which felt so because he never washed his hands, but 
rubbed his fingers' ends quite slightly with the wet end of a 
napkin ; his legs were very weak, some have thought through 
some foul play in his youth, and the weakness made him 
ever leaning on other people's shoulders, and his walk was 
ever circular." * The arbitrary powers assumed by this sin- 
gular person can only have had the effect of rousing the most 
vehement indignation in the minds of the very many who in 
England, in that day, were beginning to realize the folly and 
emptiness of all merely titular claims to homage and regard. 
On a cold October morning, in 1619, a great crime was 

* Weldon's character of King James, quoted in " Memoirs of the Court of King 
James I.," by Lucy Akin. 



30 OLIVER CROMWELL* 

perpetrated, the influence of which was to create one of the 
most bitter and invincible enemies to the tactics and 
policy of the Stuarts, as represented either by James or 
Charles ; that fine old English gentleman. Sir Walter 
Raleigh, was brought forth to the scaffold in Palace Yard. 
Perhaps the reader is scarcely able to repress the feeling, 
even now, of abhorrent indignation that such a miserable piece 
of loathsome corruption as James should have been able to 
order the death of so great and magnanimous a man. It 
was on the 29th of October, when the officers went into his 
room to tell him that all was in readiness for his execution, 
they found him smoking his last pipe and drinking his last cup 
of sack, remarking to those who came to fetch him, that " it 
was a good liquor, if a man might stay by it." He said he 
was ready, and so they set forth. Young Sir John Eliot was 
in the crowd, and saw him die, and he never forgave that death ; 
and perhaps, the rather as it was the offering of cowardice to 
appease the animosity of Spain. And in future years, when 
Cromwell had to decide whether he shoul-d accept an alliance 
with France or Spain, it was probably the death of Raleigh, 
among other motives, which led him to send forlh Blake to 
pour his tempests of fire over the Spanish colonies, and to 
avenge the outrages on England so often perpetrated by that 
power, so hateful and abominable to all English tastes and 
feeling. There seems nothing in the character of James 
which could ever have recommended him to English sym- 
pathies, whether we regard his dealings with Church or State, 
whether with matters of political principle or finance. It is 
a .singular trait of his character that he affected to treat with 
contempt his illustrious predecessor. Queen Elizabeth, and 
no doubt regarded himself as far superior to her in all that 
constituted the majesty of the sovereign, and all that could 
imply power of dealing with statesmen. Many enormities of 
cruelty, which had fallen into hopeful disuse in her reign, 
were called into existence again. He commenced a more 
severe persecution of the Puritans ; and many of his speeches, 
either to them or about them, exhibit at once the low shrewd- 
ness and the despotic willfulness of his character. In his 
speeches to the Puritan champions, when they ventured to 
address his majesty in petition for a revival of those meetings 
which Elizabeth and her bishops had been at great pains to 
suppress, he burst forth into most unkinglike anger, and 
violent and abusive harshness. " If you aimed at a Scotch 
Presbytery, it agrees as well with monarchy as God and 



ANCESTR V, FAMIL V, AND EARL Y DA YS. \\ 

devil; then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, 
and, at their pleasure, censure me and my council." " My 
Lords the bishops," he said, putting his hand to his hat, *' I 
may thank you that these men plead thus for my supremacy, 
they think they can not make their party good against you 
but by appealing unto it. But if once you are out, and they 
in, I know what will become of my supremacy ; for no bishop^ 
no king ! I have learned of what cut they have been who, 
preaching before me since my coming into England, passed 
over with silence my being supreme governor in causes 
ecclesiastical." Then turning to Dr. Reynolds, " Well, Doc- 
tor, have you anything more to say ? " " No more, if it 
please your majesty." " If this be all your party hath to 
say, I will make them conform themselves, or else harrie 
them out of the land, or else do worse." Such was the in- 
decent language this man could indulge to gentlemen who 
came, with the meekness of subjects, to urge upon the king 
the claims of conscience. It was high time that this family 
should receive some lessons as to the limitation of royal pre- 
rogative. And as over the conscience of his subjects, so he 
also entertained the same ideas as to the rights of prerogative 
over their pockets. He was reckless in his extravagance, he 
would listen to no advice, his embarrassments increased 
daily ; he did not like parliaments, and without parliaments 
how could he obtain a parliamentary grant .'* So he ordered 
the sheriffs of all the counties to demand of all persons of 
substance, within their respective limits, a free gift propor- 
tionate to the necessities of the king ; the sheriffs also were 
ordered to take strict cognizance of all persons who refused 
to contribute, and the names of such given in to the Privy 
Council were marked out for perpetual harrying and hostility 
by the Court. He did not gain much by this obnoxious and 
arbitrary scheme — only about ;£"5 0,000 it is said ; but it lost 
him the confidence and the affection of the entire nation. 
Such are some sufficient lines indicating the character of the 
founder of the line of the Stuarts in England ; in a word, it 
may be said he inherited, in all their coarseness, the worst 
vices of every member of his famiJy. He was not without 
some claim to the pretensions he made to learning, but such 
learning as he possessed exhibited itself in intolerable pedan- 
' try, and a foolish and offensive parade of what amounted to a 
little more than grammatical precision. His works, such as 
they are, remind us of those personal pleasantries which 
Weldon attaches to his person. His superstition was dismal, 



32 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

grotesque, and dreadful ; and by his wild ideas concerning 
witchcraft, and the possibility of evil intercourse with another 
world, he aided in the extension of dark and morbid ideas, 
and inaugurated a succession of cruelties which, in their hor- 
rible enormities of persecution, equaled almost anything to 
which poor human nature had been subjected in the enormities 
of the Inquisition, and which, alas ! furnished precedents for 
the continuance of the same horrors through future years. 
On the whole, it is scarcely too much to say that the reign 
of James I. is for the most part a dark blot in the history of 
our country. Whatever of luster there may be is derived 
from the last rays of the setting sun of the age of Elizabeth, 
or the first streaks of dawn, promising the morning glory, 
when the people, wearied and worn out by the ignominy of 
oppression, should stand upon their feet prepared to enter 
on the contest, and struggle for rights withheld so long. 
The whole story of the reign, however, should be distinctly 
remembered in order that the origin of those ideas may be 
traced which wrought with such fatal and tragic effect upon 
the charcicter and career of Charles. And such was the 
English monarch and monarchy when Oliver Cromwell 
was a boy. 

The schoolboy days are over, and we may follow young 
Oliver to Cambridge ; he entered, as a fellow-commoner of Sid- 
ney Sussex College, on the Feast of the Annunciation, the 23d 
of April, 1616. Carlyle has not failed to notice a remarkable 
event which transpired on this day, and our readers shall have 
it in his own words : " Curious enough," he says, " of all 
days, on this same day, Shakespeare, as his stone monument 
still testifies at Stratford-on-Avon, died : 

" * Obiit Anno Domini 16 16. 
^ talis 53. Die 23 Apr.'' 

While Oliver Cromwell was entering himself of Sidney Sussex 
College, William Shakespeare was taking his farewell of this 
world. Oliver's father had, most likely, come with him ; it is 
but twelve miles from Huntingdon ; you can go and come in a 
day. Oliver's father saw him write in the album at Cam- 
bridge ; at Stratford, Shakespeare's Ann Hathaway was weep- 
ing over his bed. The first world-great thing that remains of 
English history, the literature of Shakespeare, was ending j 
the second world-great thing that remains of English history) 
the armed Appeal of Puritanism to the invisible God of heaven 



ANCESTR V, FA MIL F, AND EARL V DA YS. 33 

against many visible devils, on earth and elsewhere, was, so to 
speak, beginning. They have their exits and their entrances. 
And one people in its time plays many parts." * 

But Cromwell's study at Cambridge was brief enough. In 
the month of June of the next year he was called to the death- 
bed of his father ; the wise, kind counselor and guide of his 
youth was gone. Now he followed him, as the chief mourner, 
to the chancel of the parish church of St. John's, and returned 
to the solitary hearth to comfort, as he best might, his surviv- 
ing parent. We do not know whether he returned to Cam- 
bridge ; but it is probable that, if he returned, it was for a 
very short time ; for he had now to prepare himself as quickly 
as possible for the bustle and reality of active life, as it would 
be necessary that he should take his place as director and head 
of the family. His detractors have been glad to make out a 
case for his ignorance in all matters pertaining to polite and 
elegant literature, and perhaps it could scarcely be expected 
that a youth whose studies closed in his seventeenth year 
should be a finished scholar ; but facts stubbornly contend for 
the furniture and polishment of his understanding. He ever 
had a sincere respect for men of learning, and patronized and 
elevated them, and showed a disposition to honor literature in 
its representatives. He was wont to converse in Latin with 
the embassadors he received, and, although Bishop Burnet has 
made it an occasion of jest, not one of the most learned of 
them speaks of his Latin with any slight or contempt. 

The monarchs and masters of mankind have seldom been 
able to abide the scrutiny bestowed upon their home and fire- 
side. It is the most doubtful of all tests by which to examine 
a man, and especially a great man — a man whom the world has 
claimed, whose time and talents have been placed at the 
world's disposal ; a man irritated by contending factions, who 
has been compelled to appraise men, and their motives, and 
frequently to appraise them very lowly. When we follow such 
a man from the camp, and the cabinet, and are able to behold 
a fountain of freshness playing through the home-thoughts of 
the man, to see a perennial greenness about his life, with his 
wife and children, we seem to have applied the last test by 
which we attempt to understand his character. Now, it might 
be thought that Cromwell's character had but little home-life 
ia it. Yet it never changes ; it opens before us in his youth, 
and a beautiful freshness and affection appears to play about it 
until the close of his career. 

* " Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," vol. i. pp. 58, 59. 



34 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

There is something like an answer to the charges of his 
early wildness and licentiousness in the fact that he wedded 
such a woman as.Elizabeth Boucher, the daughter of a wealthy- 
knight, possessed of estates in Essex ; for the consent of such 
a wife is almost a security for the character of her husband. 

Truly affecting is the imaginary spectacle, so easily conjured 
up, of Cromwell and his bride standing by the altar of St. 
Giles's Church, Cripplegate, the church which was, by and by, 
to receive the body of his friend and secretary, John Milton. 
The soft hand of Elizabeth — the rough, strong hand of Oliver ; 
the hand holding that little one in its grasp was to deal death- 
blows on battle-fields ; it was to sign a monarch's death-war- 
rant ; it was to grasp the truncheon of royalty and power ; it 
was to fold the purple of sovereignty over the shoulders ; it was 
to wave back an offered crown ! That frank but strongly-lined 
face, so youthful, yet prematurely thoughtful ; and that kind 
and gentle creature, face to face before him — through what a 
crowd of varying changes shall it sorrow and smile : in a lowly 
homestead, directing the work of maids and churls ; in a palace 
and a court, among nobles and sagacious statesmen ; and again, 
in silence and obscurity ; and shining with the same equable 
luster through all. Beautiful Elizabeth Boucher ! so humble, 
and yet so dignified ! Those. who knew her have not neglected 
to inform us that she was an excellent housewife, descending to 
the kitchen with as much propriety as she ascended to her lofty 
station. How she shines in contrast with Henrietta, the queen 
of Charles I. Was she fitted to fill a throne ? Her name 
must not be included in the biographies of the queens of 
England ; and yet, perhaps, not one among the queens consort 
more truly deserves there a chronicle than she. 

A loving and beautiful wife ; and Oliver appears ever to ad- 
vantage in connection with all the memories we have of her. 
It is given to us to see something of their home during the 
period of about ten years that Cromwell remained in quietude 
and seclusion. The spectacle of that home, the interior of it, 
is veiy amusing to Hume and sundry other historians ; for it 
would seem that there was prayer there, and the singing of 
hymns and spiritual songs, and the reading of Scripture, and 
comments, and even preachings, thereon. All this, to a man 
of Hume's character, was most laughable and inexpressibly 
comic. It was all a part of the conduct of our " fanatical 
hypocrite," who, however, Hume thinks, must have lost very 
much, and " gone back in worldly matters in consequence.'' 
Now, with all deference to Hume's clearer perceptions, hypo- 



ANCESTRY, FAMILY, AND EARLY DAYS, 35 

crites do not usually like to lose by their religious profession ; 
to gain is a part of their policy and determination. We sus- 
pect, however, that Cromwell did not lose. This is mere 
assumption without foundation : he would knoAv, of all men, 
both how to be " diligent in business and fervent 'in spirit." 
And Milton, in his account of him, leads us to altogether an- 
other inference when he says, " Being now arrived to a mature 
and ripe age, all which time he spent as a private person, noted 
for nothing so much as the culture of pure religion and an in- 
tegrity of life, he was grown rich at home^ and had enlarged 
his hopes, relying upon God and a great soul, in a quiet bosom, 
for any the most exalted times." That home at St. Ives the 
late possessor of Cromwell's house razed to the ground, so 
that not one brick remained standing on another. The man 
who razed Cromwell's house also razed his own : he died a 
beggar, and his only daughter is now in the workhouse of St. 
Ives. 

Cromwell married August 2 2d, 1620. Before him there are 
yet thirty-eight years of life. Of these we shall find that, dur- 
ing nearly twenty of them, as Milton has said, " he nursed his 
great soul in silence," especially during the first ten years 
spent in Huntingdon. 

It is not difficult to glance at the education of the hero. To 
the superintendence of a brewery we may be certain he added 
the superintendence of farms and fields ; and about 1631 he 
removed from Huntingdon, about five miles down the river 
Ouse, to St. Ives, renting there a grazing farm. There he 
probably spent about seven years of his life. If, reader, thou 
hast ever walked, as we have done, by the banks of that river, 
through the lovely little rural villages of Houghton, and Hart- 
ford, and Hemingford, and Godmanchester, and the adjacent 
little ruralities, be sure thou hast trodden through some of the 
most remarkable scenery in England — in the world. There 
he was accustomed to walk to and fro. Fancy, immediately 
at our bidding, presents him to us, by the fireside of the old 
gabled farm-house, or in the field attending to his farm affairs, 
mowing, milking, marketing. We may think of Cromwell 
standing in the market with his fellow-tradesmen, and striding 
through those fields, and by those roadsides, and by the 
course of the stream, then sedgy and swampy enough. What 
thoughts came upon him ; for was he not fighting there the 
same battle Luther fought at Erfurth } He was vexed by fits 
of strange black hypochondria. Dr. Simcot, of Huntingdon, 
"in shadow of meaning, much meaning expressions," inti- 



36 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

mates to us how much he suffered. He was oppressed with 
dreadful consciousness of sin and defect. He groaned in 
spirit like Paul, like later saints — Bunyan, for instance. A 
flat, level country is it about St. Ives, and then probably 
much more like the fen country of Norfolk than the quiet, 
lovely seclusion its neighborhood wears at the present day ; 
but there, in the experience of this man, powers of heaven, 
earth, and hell were struggling for masterdom. The stunted 
willows and sedgy watercourses, the flags and reeds, would 
often echo back the mourning words, " Oh, wretched man 
that I am ! " What conception had he of the course lying 
before him t What knowledge had he of the intentions of 
Providence concerning him ? Life lay before him all in 
shadow. For fifteen years he appears to have had no other 
concern than " to know Christ and the power of His resurrec- 
tion, and the fellowship of His sufferings." But, then, it 
would be scarcely other than possible to hear, from news and 
scattered report, how one and another of God's faithful ser- 
vants were shut up in prison, fined, pilloried, and persecuted 
to banishment and death, without additional anguish to the 
severe torture of the mind crying for salvation ; nor would it 
be possible to hear of successive tyrannic exactions and im- 
positions, of libidinousness, intemperance at Court and 
throughout the country, without wonder, too, where all this 
should end. Men called and ordained by God to great actions 
have strong presentiments and mental foreshadowings ; and 
Cromwell would be probably visited by mysterious intimations 
that he was, in some way, to solve the mighty riddle of the 
kingdom's salvation. But how ? What madness to dream it ! 
How? 

Nor must we forget that during these years Cromwell had 
many times renewed the joys and anxieties of a father ; indeed 
all his children were born before he emerged from the fen 
country into public life. They were as follows : 

Robert, his first-born, baptized 13th October, 1621. 

Oliver, baptized 6th of February, 1623. He was killed in 
battle early in the civil war. The Protector alluded to him on 
his death-bed : " It went to my heart like a dagger ; indeed it 
did." 

Bridget, baptized 4th of August, 1624. She was married to 
Ireton, and after Ireton's death to Fleetwood ; and died at 
Stoke Newington, near London, 1681. 

Richard, born 4th of October, 1626. Him Carlyle calls 
" a poor idle triviality." 



ANCESTRY, FAMILY, AND EARLY DAYS, 37 

Henry, baptized 20th July, 1628. 

Elizabeth, baptized 2d July, 1629. 

All the above children were born at Huntingdon ; the fol- 
lowing at St. Ives and Ely : 

James, baptized 8th Januar}^, 1631 ; died next day. 

Mary, baptized at Huntingdon, 3d February, 1636. 

Francis, baptized at Ely, 6th December, 1638. " Preaching 
there, praying there, he passed his days solacing persecuted 
ministers, and sighing in the bitterness of his soul." 

In all, five sons and four daughters ; of whom three sons, 
and all the daughters, came to maturity at Ely ; for about 1638 
Cromwell, probably, removed to Ely. His uncle. Sir Thomas, 
resided there. His mother's relatives — those of them who 
were left — were there ; and now his mother herself removed 
there, probably with the idea of there terminating her days in 
the presence of first impressions and associations. The time 
draws nigh for Oliver to leave his silence, his lonely wander- 
ings to and fro, his plannings, and his doubtings. The storm 
is up in England, and Oliver has become a marked man ; he 
probably knows that he will have to take a prominent part in 
the affairs of the kingdom. Halt we awhile to reflect on this. 
This obscure man, lone English farmer, untitled, unwealthy, 
no grace of manner to introduce himself^ ungainly in speech 
and in action, unskilled in war, unused to the arts of courts 
and the cabals of senates and legislators — this man whose life 
was passed altogether with farmers and religious-minded men 
seemed at almost a bound, to leap to the highest place in the 
people's army, grasping the baton of the marshal. This man 
was to strike the successful blows on the field, shivering to 
pieces the kingly power in the land — himself was to assume 
the truncheon of the Dictator ; was to sketch the outline of 
laws, of home and foreign policy, which all succeeding legisla- 
tors were to attempt to embody and imitate ; was to wring con- 
cessions to his power from the most haughty monarchies of an- 
cient feudal Europe, and to bear up, in arms, England, fast dwin- 
dling into contempt, to the very foremost place among the na- 
tions ; was to produce throughout the world homage to the 
Protestant religion, making before his name the fame and 
terror of Gustaviis, of Henry IV., of Zisca, to dwindle and 
look pale. And this with no prestige of birth or education. 
Is it too much, then, to call him the most royal actor England, 
if not the world, has produced ? 

Notice, also, that when he was at Cambridge he won some 
money at gambling : ;^2o, ;^5o, ^100. All these sums now 



38 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

were returned as moneys upon no principle his own. Here, 
too, is a letter of this Huntingdon time, just before the busy 
world called him away, giving a glimpse of the man : 

" To my beloved cousin^ Mrs. St. John., at William Masham, his 
housey called Otes^ ifi Essex. — Present these. 

" Ely, 13th October, 1638. 
" Dear Cousin, — 

" I thankfully acknowledge your love in your kind remem- 
brance of me upon this opportunity. Alas ! you too highly 
prize my lines and my company. I may be ashamed to own 
your expressions, considering how unprofitable I am, and the 
mean improvement of my talent. 

" Yet to honor my God by declaring what he hath done for 
my soul, in this I am confident, and I will be so. Truly, then, 
this I find, that He giveth springs in a dry, barren wilderness, 
where no water is. I live, you know where — in Meshec, which 
they say means prolonging — in Kedar, which signifies black- 
ness ; yet the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do pro- 
long, yet He will, I trust, bring me to His tabernacle, to His 
resting-place. My soul is with the congregation of the first- 
born ; my body rests in hope ; and if here I may honor my 
God, either by doing or by suffering, I shall be most glad. 

" Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put himself 
forth in the cause of God than I. I have had plentiful wages 
beforehand ; and I am sure I shall never earn the least mite. 
The Lord accept me in His Son, and give me to walk in the 
light, as He is the light ! He it is that enlighteneth our 
blackness, our darkness. I dare not say He hideth His face 
from me. He giveth me to see light in His light. One beam 
in a dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it. 
Blessed be His name for shining upon so dark a heart as 
mine ! You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I 
lived in and loved darkness and hated light ! I was a chief, 
the chief of sinners. This is true ; I hated godliness, yet 
God had mercy on me. Oh, the richness of His mercy ! 
Praise Him for me — pray for me, that He who hath begun a 
good work would perfect it in the day of Christ." 

Notice, also, that those latest years of James and first years 
of Charles were the period when the cruel persecution pro- 
ceeding in England drove the first emigrants away into the 
American wilderness, there to found the old Massachusetts Col- 
ony ; they left their homes and country, willing to encounter the 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN ELIOT. 3^ 

privations and dangers of the distant wilderness, hoping there 
to find a rest and refuge for outraged religion and humanity. 
Those were the days commemorated by the Plymouth Rock — 
the first settlers in Salem and the growth of Lynn. We refer 
to this especially, because tradition says that on the ist ctf 
May, 1638, eight ships, bound for New England, and filled with 
Puritan families, were arrested and interrupted in the Thames 
by an order from the king, and that among their passengers 
in one of those vessels were Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and 
Hazelrig. Mr. John Forster doubts this, but can not dis- 
prove it. Our own impression is that these master patriots 
were probably on board ; that they did not intend to desert 
their country, in whose existence and future they had too 
large an interest, but that they were on a voyage of discovery, 
partly to sympathize with the exiles, and partly to obtain some 
knowledge for future possibilities. The rumor seems to be 
too extended to be altogether unfounded. 



CHAPTER HI. 

Cromwell's contemporaries : sir john eliot. 

We are desirous to set before our readers, not only the 
character of Cromwell himself, but of those contemporaries 
who also wrought out with him the work of national salvation ; 
among these, and especially those who may be termed the 
great heralds and precursors of what may be called more 
strictly the Cromwell period, no name is more eminent than 
that of John Eliot. He is really the Elijah of the Revolution, 
and his was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, " Pre- 
pare ye the way." His bold, courageous, and ardent spirit 
went before, and he anticipated the great impeachments of 
Pym and the great victories of Cromwell. It is only recently 
that he has been restored to the high place in popular regard 
and memory, from whence he had passed almost into obscurity, 
until Mr. John Forster first published his brief life, more than 
thirty years since, in his " Statesmen of the Commonwealth," 
and afterward expanded the sketch into the two handsome 
volumes which now so pleasantly embalm the name and mem- 
ory, the words and works and sufferings, we may add, the 
martyrdom, of John Eliot. He was born in 1590, a Cornish- 
man, but on the banks of the Tamar, in the town of St. Ger- 



40 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

mains, which, however, does not appear to have been more 
than a poor little straggling village of fishermen. Traveling 
on the Continent, he made the acquaintance of the Duke of 
Buckingham the favorite of James I. Perhaps the acquaint- 
ance was not very intimate or very deep ; it seems likely, how- 
ever, that to it Eliot owed his position of Vice-Admiral of 
Devon. When, however, Eliot entered into public life, the 
opinions and careers of the two men were so divergent, that 
it is probable that, by his great impeachment of the Duke, 
Eliot would have taken away his head had not Felton's lance 
anticipated the headsman's stroke. 

Eliot entered Parliament in his twenty-fourth year as mem- 
ber for the borough of St. Germains, and he found himself in 
company with some of the men whose names were to be allied 
with his own in working out the English redemption. John 
Hampden, three or four years younger than Eliot, had not yet 
finished his studies in the Inner Temple ; but there were Pym, 
Philips, Sir Edward Joel, Sir Edward Sands, and Whitelock, 
and, amphibiously bowing about, but scarcely giving a hint of 
the vast space he was to fill by his power in the future, Sir 
Thomas Wentworth, soon afterward created Earl of Strafford. 
Buckingham was the favorite^the most unprincipled of favor- 
ites, but Lord High Admiral of England. And here we are 
most likely to discover the cause of Eliot's elevation to the 
Vice-Admiralty of Devon. The Duke, probably, soon found 
that he had made a mistake in the appointment of Eliot to 
this post. The western coast was ravaged by pirates, and 
Eliot does not appear to have understood that it was quite 
possible for, perhaps almost expected that, the admiral and 
the pirate, especially if he were an English pirate, should un- 
derstand each other. Not only Turkish rovers swept round 
our seas, but wild, lawless, dissolute Englishmen, bold bra- 
vadoes capable of every crime, who, when they were wearied 
and foiled in their adventures upon Spanish dollars and 
doubloons, varied the pleasantr}^ of their occupation by more 
homely and less toilsome endeavors, seizing our own mer- 
chant ships, surprising and pouncing upon villages and small 
towns along the coast, and, in innumerable ways, creating a 
fear and a dread on the land and on the sea. What seems 
most marvelous to us now, is that such men should be fre- 
quently shielded and patronized by Government, or Govern- 
ment favorites, for their own ends and purposes ! 

This was the case, just then, with one who had obtained the 
most infamous distinction, Captain John Nutt, one of the most 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN EjuIOT. 41 

daring sea-devils of that lawless time. He was an untakable 
man, and he had several pirate ships. He commenced his 
career as gunner of a vessel in Dartmouth harbor bound for 
the Newfoundland seas. Coming to Newfoundland, he col- 
lected a crew of pleasant fellows like himself ; they seized a 
French ship, also a large Pl3^mouth ship, then a Flemish ship 
and, with these gay rovers, he played off his depredations on 
the fishing craft of the Newfoundland seas, and came back, too 
strong for capture, to the western coasts of England. Arrived 
there, this worthy played off new deviltries : he tempted men 
from the king's service by the promises of higher wages, and 
— ^what, alas ! might easily be promised in those dreary days- 
more certain payment; he hung about To rbay, laughed at 
threats, scoffed at promises of pardon, although more than 
one offer had been made conditionally. The whole western 
country was in a state of dread, and municipalities poured their 
entreaties upon the council and upon Eliot in his office of Vice- 
Admiral. What did it all avail ? Capture seemed a mere 
dream, a hopeless thing. Sometimes he touched the shore, 
and, as was the wont with those bold fellows, when he did so, 
he was fond of exhibiting himself in the dress of men he had 
plundered. The mind of Eliot was moved at these things. 
Sir George Calvert, a great Court favorite, had interests in 
Newfoundland ; to him Nutt was necessary, and he appears 
to have obtained pardons for the pirate. Copies of the par- 
dons were issued to Eliot — it was his design to make the 
pardons useless ; he was bound on capturing the pirate, but 
the pirate was too wary for the admiral. At last he had 
recourse to negotiation ; but even while the negotiation for 
submission was in progress, Nutt made it still further unavail- 
ing by the capture of a rich Colchester ship with a cargo of 
sugar and timber. Eliot immediately insisted that this should 
be given up ; the daring pirate was indignant at the com- 
mand ; and now Eliot became yet more crafty. But how 
remarkable is all this as illustrating the state of the times, 
that only the admiral should have been in earnest to take the 
man, and he had to represent to the Government how ill- 
deserved pardon and grace to such a man would be ; that dur- 
ing the period of three months since the pardon had been 
issued, this lively specimen of an ancient British sailor had 
occupied his time in committing depredations and spoils on 
the coast, in one week had taken ten or twelve ships, and 
while the pardon was in negotiation, had seized the Col- 
chester brig with a freightage of ;^40oo ! In thq end,, however. 



42 OLIVER CROMWELL 

Eliot did manage to get possession of him. He seized Nutt's 
ship, took down her sails, and put a guard on board her, and 
then wrote to the Council, waiting to hear in what way he was to 
deal with the pirate and the men. The pirate was more pow- 
erful than the admiral. Buccaneers, and especially such a 
buccaneer as Nutt — an immensely wealthy man, a daring, 
resolute, and serviceable man — had friends at Court, espe- 
cially, as we have seen, a friend in Calvert. It is marvelous to 
relate, that Nutt was permitted to become the accuser of the 
admiral — the admiral who had been first congratulated by Con- 
way, the Secretary of State, for his daring and magnanimous 
conduct, and who had been told by letter that he was to re- 
ceive the king's thanks and to kiss the king's hand in acknowl- 
edgment of his rescue of the western counties and seas from 
Nutt's piracy, plunder, and murder. That admiral, our read- 
ers will understand, for that very transaction of seizing that 
pirate, the month following, lay in the Marshalsea prison upon 
some frivolous pretenses ; while the happy and blithe-hearted 
pirate and plunderer stepped forth with a free and uncondi- 
tional pardon, to renew his pleasant adventures on the seas. 
Of course there had to seem some pretext of law for this ; but 
law, in the person of the Chief Justice, Sir Henry Marten, 
soon shriveled up all these pretexts. Sir John Eliot, indeed,' 
did escape from prison and from all punishment, but not with 
such flying colors as Nutt, '' that unlucky fellow, Captain 
Nutt," as Sir George Calvert called him, poor penitent pi- 
rate ! Whatever Nutt said, what protestations he made, we 
know not ; a shaggy black dog like that making a clean 
breast of it is a queer picture to us. " This poor man," says 
Sir George, " is able to do the king service if he be employed, 
and I do assure myself he doth so detest his former course of 
life, he will never enter on it again." So the Vice-Admiral of 
Devon was weighed in the scales against a freebooter of the 
seas, and found wanting ! The whole man seems to come 
out in the indignant truthfulness running though Sir John's 
letter. Nay, the admiral was to pay a fine of ;^ioo to the 
pirate for his ship and goods seized; but. here the admiral 
was tough. One of the officers writes to their lordships of 
the Government, while Sir John continues in prison : " So 
may it please your lordships. Sir John won't pay; so that 
your lordships' order is very much slighted, and nothing at all 
regarded." He escaped from prison, however, as the pirate 
escaped — by royal favor and State protection — ^from the gal- 
lows Eliot had erected for him. 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN ELIOT. 43 

This is not the last we hear of Mr. Nutt. That penitent 
person achieved still greater fame than before on the seas, and 
became, say the records, the most incomparable nuisance in 
all his majesty's dominions. Nothing on the seas was safe 
from him. At last. Captain Plumjeigh was sent to the Irish 
seas to seek him and to take him. Nutt met the captain with 
twenty-seven Turks, gave the captain chase,- and, had he not 
fled into harbor, would have sunk his ship. This encouraged 
the penitent pirate to still further magnanimities ; he struck at 
the very highest game, and when Lord Wentworth sent over to 
Ireland — to which country he was himself going as the Lord- 
Lieutenant — a ship full of luggage, furniture, wardrobe, plate, 
etc., essential to his station, Nutt seized the whole. Went- 
worth was the intimate friend and counselor of the king, and 
also the intimate friend of that Sir George Calvert who had 
saved Nutt's bull-neck from its legitimate twisting some years 
before ; but, as we do not read that Nutt made restitution 
when these little particulars were discovered, perhaps he did 
not the less enjoy his prize. We believe he reached a happy 
and honored old age, and died comfortably, as a man deserved 
to do who availed himself of the facilities afforded by those times 
when " every man did that which was right in his own eyes." 

This exercise of prerogative with which Eliot came immedi- 
ately into collision, would not be likely to incline him to look 
patiently upon the successive attempts of royal rapacity. 

It was through Sir John Eliot, very eminently, that the 
Commons and the Stuarts came at last to their great rupture. 
James I. heartily desired alliance with Spain by the marriage 
of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta, and when the negoti- 
ations were broken off, the nation manifested its hearty sympa- 
thy by a great outburst of joy. Then came the contest with 
the stubborn old king upon the privilege of debate in Parlia- 
ment. The king said the Parliament held their liberties by 
toleration, not by right ; and when the House recorded its very 
different conviction in a resolution on its Journals, the imbecile 
old king came up from Theobald's in a passion, got together a 
privy council, and six of the Judges, sent for the Commons' 
journal, and even dared to tear out the registry. He then in- 
stantly dissolved the House by proclamation, and wound up 
the arduous labors of the day by tumbling off his horse into 
the New River. It was winter — December weather — the ice 
broke, so that nothing but his boots were seen, which mishap 
was a pretty diagram of that representative Stuart. Then 
came the coquetting with popery, and the disastrous marriage 



44 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

of the Prince of Wales with Henrietta Maria. Then also came 
James's last Parliament of 1623-4, in which Eliot was member 
for Newport. The intense Protestantism of the country longed 
to interfere to help the Protestants of the Continent, and espe- 
cially to be at war with Spain. " Are we indeed poor ? " 
asked Eliot, about this time in a memorable debate in the 
House. " Be it so ; Spain is rich. We will make that our 
Indies. Break with her, and we shall break with our necessi- 
ties also." Supplies were voted to meet the necessities of the 
coast-guard defense, as well as for warlike equipments. Then 
bonfires blazed to the very doors of the Spanish embassy, and 
all the world in the city ran into debt for fagots and gallons 
of wine. " The Spaniards," said aristocratic Wentworth, 
afterward Strafford, " were insulted, to the great joy of all the 
cobblers and other bigots and zealous brethren of the town." 
Still went on the game of imposition by prerogative. Mis-, 
chievous monopolies sprang into existence. Large traders 
were beggared by the actions of the Government, and the 
merchant shipping of the country had fallen away to an alarm- 
ing extent. Many of the exports most in demand had been 
diminished more than half. The Government in truth plun- 
dered its subjects and robbed itself. 

The old king died, and his death was followed by a sense 
of relief and hope. But the new reign brought no relief, and 
the hope was soon dissipated. At this time there existed in 
England many of the same fearful indications which were the 
preludes of the subsequent French Revolution ; while the 
people were starving beneath the weight of oppression and 
forced loans, so that for the first twelve years of the reign of 
Charles I. scarcely any one dared to call his property his 
own, and a morning never rose upon an English family which 
was not dreaded as the possible herald of some new oppres- 
sion, it is quite curious, and moves to a natural indignation, 
to notice the enormous sums expended by the king on dia-- 
monds, jewels, and chains of gold, either for himself or for 
personal presents. We read of ^10,400 paid to one William 
Rogers, a goldsmith; we read of ^10,000 paid- to Philip 
Jacobson, a jeweler, for a ring, etc. ; we read of ;^2ooo paid 
to Henry Garway, Esq., for one large thick table diamond ; 
we read of ;^8ooo paid to Sir Manrill Abbott for a diamond 
set in a collar of gold ; and in fact, there lie before us a 
long catalogue of similar items, indicating the reckless ex- 
travagance of the king. It is almost the anticipation of the 
story of the diamond necklace with natural differences ; and 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHxV ELIOT. 45 

meantime the people were crushed down beneath cruel exac- 
tions to satisfy the cost of these playthings. The great 
guide of state, Buckingham, continued the game, and soon 
was manifested the same arbitrary misrule. The Parliament 
pursued its way, determined from session to session to main- 
tain its strength and its integrity. Meantime, early in the 
reign, the laws against Puritan Dissent began to be pressed 
with eager severity, and Laud was active in his bad business 
of superstitious bigotry. Looking back upon these times, 
they seem sad, black, and desolate ; the plague ravaged the 
rnetropolis, the deaths averaging about five thousand a week. 
The city was empty, grass was growing in the street ; and 
Lily, the astrologer, going to prayers to St. Antholin's, in Wat- 
Hng Street, from a house over the Strand Bridge, beween six 
and seven in a summer morning of the month of July, testi- 
fies that so few people were then alive and the streets so unfr- 
quented he met only three persons in the way. And then came 
the debate on the Tonnage and Poundage Bill, and the king 
and Buckingham pursued their bad path. Sir Humphrey 
May, the Chancellor, sought the mediation of the popular 
and powerful member. Sir John Eliot, to attempt to bring the 
Duke of Buckingham to a sense of reason. It was a strange 
interview. He came to York House, and found the duke 
with the duchess yet in bed ; but notice having been given of 
his coming, the duchess rose and withdrew to her cabinet, 
and he was let in. " Ourselves," says Mr. Forster,." admitted 
also to this strange interview, the curtain of the past is uplift- 
ed for us at a critical time." 

" Judging the present moment of time by what we now 
know to have followed it, will it be too much to say that if 
Eliot could have prevailed with Buckingham, and if the result 
had been that better understanding between the ParUament 
and the Court which he desired to establish, the course of 
English history might have been changed. To Charles's 
quarrel with his first Parliament, Clarendon ascribes all the 
troubles of his reign ; and now the good or the ill under- 
standing, publicly, is to date from this day. What privately 
is to flow from its two hours' conference, not only to the men 
sitting in that bedchamber of York House, but to the royal 
master whom they would both have served, will not have ex- 
hausted itself for many years. It will not have closed when 
Buckingham's wretched death has come. When Eliot sinks 
beneath the king's unrelenting persecution of his favorite's 
fiercest assailant, it will be working still. Not until the 



46 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

harsh persecution of Eliot is remembered and put forth in 
later years to justify the harshness dealt out to an imprisoned 
king, will the cycle of wrong and retribution be complete 
that this day begins." 

Eliot used what argument he could, and he has told his own 
story of the interview, with the tremendous discovery of Buck- 
ingham listening impatiently, and then letting fall a hasty 
word, so that the whole truth flashed upon him that the suc- 
cess of the Tonnage and Poundage Bill was not so much de- 
sired as reasonable ground for quarrel. " The propositioh 
must proceed without consideration of success, wherein was 
lodged this project merelie to be denied." "For the pres- 
ent," Eliot concludes, " this observation of Buckingham gave 
that gentleman [himself] some wonder with astonishment ; 
who with the seals of privacie closed up those passages in 
silence ; yet thereon grounded his observations for the future, 
that noe respect of persons made him [Eliot] desert his coun- 
trie." 

Duing the recess of 1625, Eliot traveled to the West. As 
he passed along, news reached him of the cruel mischief in- 
flicted by Turkish pirates, who from under forts and castles 
left helpless and unguarded, sprung on EngHsh ships. The 
western sea, v^'ith all the villages lining its coasts, was entirely 
at their mercy ; all trade was interrupted, and the number of 
Christians captured to be sold into slavery during the outrages 
of three months could not be less than twelve hundred. There 
were wailings for fathers and sons, for brothers, for husbands 
and wives. Meantime, the ships of the nation lay in harbor, 
men and provisions on board, and Government careless of the 
inflictions on its subjects. Eliot also first became acquainted 
with the treason meditated against the Protestants of Rochelle, 
for which the sums granted by Parliament for the defense of 
Protestant interests were diverted, to crush them. It is a story 
which covers the Government of Charles I. with ignominy, and 
renews feelings of bitter execration ; while yet it is one of the 
proudest stories of English magnanimity. It scarcely needs to 
recite that tale, which must be fresh in the recollections of all 
who are proud of their country. The French Government was 
maintaining a struggle against the Huguenots of Rochelle. 
They were very unequal to the conflict, but they were brave 
and determined. The free town of Rochelle had become the 
stronghold of Protestantism, and Richelieu determined to 
crush it. He was scarcely equal to the work ; the place was 
strong and important — it was, in fact, a kind of little republi- 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR JOHN ELIO T. 



47 



can Hanse tovvfL A clause in the marriage treaty of France 
with England, on account of Charles and Henrietta Maria, pro- 
vided that eight ships — men-of-war — should be placed by Eng- 
land at the disposal of France when claimed. It was a rather 
prompt demand, but a lucky thought induced Richelieu to ask 
for them now to serve his purpose upon Rockelle. Upon this, 
Buckingham and the king, entirely concealing their purpose 
from the Council, pressed seven first-rate merchantmen, and 
sent them to sea under the command of Captain Penning- 
ton, who had hoisted his flag on board the Vanguard man- 
of-wan 

Neither Pennington nor any of the captains knew their 
destination ; they expected they were to act against Genoa, or 
against Italy. The thing was far enough from their thoughts 
that they were to act against Protestantism, and there was a 
specific understanding that the ships promised were not to 
engage in the civil wars of the French. Arrived in the Downs, 
Pennington was scandalized to find that, by an order from the 
Admiralty, he was placed beneath the command of the French 
embassador, who was to exercise power over the whole fleet. 
When Pennington discovered the deceit practiced on him, 
and suspected that he was to be used against the Rochellois, he 
wrote in piteous terms to the ministers known to have influence 
with Buckingham, imploring mediation with the king and sal- 
vation from the disgrace. Meantime, the men on board the 
Vanguard and the other ships had discovered their destination 
and refused to fight against their brother Protestants. They 
signed a round robin, and placed it, where they knew it would 
meet their commander's eye, between the leaves of his Bible. 
The brave and pious sailor waited but a short time after receiv- 
ing it ; he brought back all his ships to the English coast. 
Arrived there, he was deceived again by the assurance that 
there was to be peace between the king of France and the 
Huguenots ; so he once more sailed for the Dieppe Roads, 
Conway, the Secretary, too^ having informed Pennington, from 
Buckingham, that the command of the fleet was to be alto- 
gether the French king's, and Pennington was, according to 
-' his majesty's express pleasure, to obey entirely the command 
of the Admiral of France. Again all these pretenses proved 
to be without foundation. The simple facts can not be im- 
peached. There is extant a letter of Buckingham, from Paris, 
to Charles, in which he says, " The peace with them of this 
religion depends upon the success of the fleet they [Richelieu] 
had from your majesty and the Low Countries." All attempts 



48 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

are vain to screen the minister and the king. There was a 
scheme first to get the fleet into a French harbor, and the false 
instructions to Pennington were the commencement. Penning- 
ton wrote direct to Buckingham, imploring his Grace to recall 
him, adding that he would rather put his life at the king's 
mercy at home, than go forward in the business, and that he 
rather desired to suffer in person than to suffer dishonor. The 
answer to this letter was a peremptory refusal of his prayer. 
The Duke marveled that he, a captain, should, upon the in- 
stance of his obedience being required, ask leave to withdraw ! 
Still he was told not to fear the issue, for news of peace be- 
tween the French king and his subjects was not far off. Pen- 
nington once more sailed, but he reached the Dieppe Roads 
alone ; the merchant captains refused to follow him ! But as 
yet Government officials had no conception of the intense relig- 
ious feelings, the passionate, Protestant zeal of the common- 
people of England. The king and the chief minister were- 
insensible to it, and their insensibility proved their ruin. 
There was soon a religious mutiny on board the Vanguard : 
the crew could not believe the ship was to be delivered up to 
the French, and it was known that it would be employed 
against the Huguenots. Pennington declared to the Secretar}', 
Nicholas, that his men were in such a rage that they swore 
nothing should prevent their carrying away the ship from the 
roads, and so indeed news came that the Vanguard was under 
sail. The ship left the roads in tempestuous weather, and 
returned to Downs. From the English coast Pennington 
makes a manly and touching appeal : he relates what had 
passed in the roads at Dieppe ; his crew had returned without 
acquainting him — but he frankly adds that he knew it, and 
had connived at it, otherwise they would never have done it ; 
and he declares that he had rather live on bread and water for 
*he rest of his days than be an actor in that business. The old 
artifices were again employed. Peace was to be made with the 
Protestants, and war declared with Spain and Milan. " The 
king," f Pennington was told, " was extremely offended with 
him," and if he desired to make his peace, he must obey 
punctually. Then the royal warrant followed, formally requir- 
ing Pennington to put his ship, the Vanguard, and all the other 
seven ships, with their equipage, artillery', and ammunition, 
into the service of his dear brother, the " most Christian 
king ; " and in case of the refusal on the part of crews, 
commanding him and the others to use all means possible to 
compel obedience, " even to the sinking of the ships." " See 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOhW ELIOT. 49 

you fail not," are the closing words of this decisive document, 
" as you will answer to the contrary at your utmost peril." 

For the third time Pennington took his Vanguard into the 
French harbor, and with him went, with desperate reluctance, 
the seven merchant ships. One captain, Sir Fernando Gorges, 
broke through and returned, learning that the destination of the 
fleet was Rochelle. Pennington and the rest doggedly obeyed 
the king's warrant, and delivered up the ships and their stores 
without their crews, Pennington declaring that he would rather 
be hanged in England for disobedience, than fight himself or 
see his seamen fight against their brother Protestants of France. 
He quietly looked on while his crews deserted ; leaving every 
ship, including his own, to be manned by Frenchmen, and 
came back to set himself right with his countrymen. The 
Vanguard hastened away to Rochelle, and her cannons, no 
longer manned by English crews, accomplished the object of 
the " martyr king " and " Defender of the Protestant Faith ! " 
— " opening fire against Rochelle, and mowing down the 
Huguenots like grass." 

These were the sailors of those days, and this was the Eng- 
lish Government of those days. Surely there was need of 
men like Eliot to attempt to mend this wrong doing ! Thus 
the money voted in subsidies by the brave English House of 
Commons to defend Protestantism in Europe, was squandered 
in the treacherous attempt to crush it. Pennington, upon his 
arrival in England, sent from his place of concealment, his 
papers to Eliot, that he might have at once the means of vin- 
dicating him to Parliament, which vindication would also be 
the impeachment of the Government. After a brief recess, 
the House reassembled, burdened with many grave causes of 
grief. Puritans were being cruelly persecuted, Jesuits were 
being pardoned and set at liberty, and the stat^ of the people 
everywhere demanded immediate consideration. Prerogative 
was dancing a perfect maniac dance through the country ; the 
dues of tonnage and poundage were actually in the course of 
levy and collection without any grant from Parliament, and 
the parties of the Court and the people became more decided 
and distinct. The demerits and defects of Buckingham, now 
especially, became daily more obvious, and roused in the 
minds of all noble Englishmen growing indignation. We 
have already spoken of the ascent of this man to power — it is 
unlike anything in our history : he simply had the grace and 
beauty of a woman, without a woman's prescience and tact. 
He delighted in dependants and ?uitors, never got beyond the 
4 



50 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Court, and could not understand the people. He could not 
COtTiprehend that the reign of favorites was passed, aftd ^he 
feign of statesmen begun • and that, as Eliot says, " the old 
genius of the kingdom is reawakening." Having very little 
af the statesman himself, he seems to have looked with covet- 
ous eye and hand on the gains of the buccaneer, while utterly 
unpossessed of the buccaneer's grasp and strength. He was 
fond of a show of mystery, and kept it up^ as Eliot says, 
" with scarce a covering for his ears, supposing his whole 
body under shadow." The time was come when his wild out- 
rages on English liberty would be tolerated no longer. In 
speaking of this Parliament, Phillipps, one of its most accom- 
plished orators, exclaimed : 

" England is the last monarchy that yet retains her liber- 
ties. Let them not perish now. Let not posterity complain 
that we have done for them worse than our fathers did for us. 
I'heir precedents are the safest steps we tread in. Let us not 
now forsake them, lest their fortunes forsake us. Wisdom 
and counsel made them happy, and the like causes now will 
have for us the like effects." 

The whole House was, to quote the words of Miltoil,^ '^ s 
grand shop of war ; " anvils and hammers kept incessantly 
Working to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed 
justice in defense of beleaguered truth ; and if the House were 
resolute to maintain its rights, not less obstinate was the king. 
Frequent were his messages to stay votes and censures, and 
this very Parliament was in this way dissolved. Its last de- 
bate was broken in upon while it was engaged in drawing up 
a paper reminding the king of his and the kingdom's hazards 
— a respectful, obedient, and loyal paper, warning him of the 
danger of holding counsel with those who would poison his 
ear against it. While the chairman was reading it, and the 
House sitting in committee, the Black Rod was heard at the 
doon The Speaker rose to resume his chair, and admit the 
royal messenger. There was a general shout, " No ! no ! " 
Other members rose to prevent him. The protest was put to 
the vote, and passed, and hastened to the king, w^ho immedi- 
ately dissolved the House. These were daring doings for a 
young king not yet crowned ; -but he had Laud by his side, to 
eke out the imbecility of Buckingham. Parliament was dis- 
solved. During the period of its dissolution, Eliot was active 
in the work of his vice-admiralty, engaged in the fitting out 
and sailing of the fleet for the Cadiz expedition. The levying 
of tonnage and poundage still went on, although the assent 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR [OHN ELIOT. 51 

had been refused to the Bill which would have made the levy- 
ing legal ; and Eliot's father-in-law was pressed upon with 
special hardness to meet the demands of one of the Privy 
Seals, a dangerous application of an old expedient. We can 
not give the whole circumstances connected with the St. Pe- 
ter, of Newhaven. We have described Buckingham as a kind 
of courtly buccaneer ; he desired by his agents to seize money 
and goods almost anywhere and anyhow. He laid a hand of 
rapacity on the men of property at home, and he seized, with- 
out any legal expedient, rich property on the sea. The St. 
Peter, of Newhaven, was a French ship, with a cargo of extra- 
ordinary value, and it was seized by the Lord High Admiral 
under the pretense of her carrying Spanish goods, her cargo 
being made the object of plunder and extortion. It created 
an immense excitement, for of course France instantly made 
sharp reprisals. The ships of English merchants were seized 
•n French ports. Eliot, upon the meeting of ParHament, took 
a very strong and decided position upon this enormous trans- 
action, denouncing not only the wickedness but the impolicy 
of making an enemy of a great nation, and the facts he 
brought out in successive examinations were startling. The 
St. Peter contained silver, gold, jewels to the value of £^0^- 
000 sterling, and, without condemnation from any judge or 
court, was stripped and carried up to the Tower. The Duke's 
conduct was not more remarkable in the exhibition of this 
one great extortion than were the minor extortions of his sub- 
ordinates. Upon the final decision of the court in favor of 
the ship, by which it was ordered to be carried back and le- 
gally discharged, the favorite not only dared to detain it in 
opposition to express verdict, but it v/as proved that his sub- 
ordinates had attempted to sell to some of the Frenchmen 
who were losers in the vessel their interest — as much as ;^8o 
for ;^5. It was at the same time, too, that the Duke won a 
perfect holocaust of obloquy for the failure of the great Cadiz 
expedition ; in plain words, it was only an attempt to fill the 
king's coffers by the piratical raid on the wealth of Spain. 
The expedition consisted of ninety sail, large and small ships, 
five thousand seamen and ten thousand soldiers. The fleet 
sailed, but it failed, and there fell upon the towns of the W^est 
of England a great disaster. Hundreds of seamen and sol- 
diers landed at Plymouth in a dying state, and a thousand 
pere said to have perished at sea before they entered the har- 
bor. For months the appalling extent of the disaster showed 
itself in every road and town on the western coast; above 



52 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

all in the streets of Plymouth, as the ships came straggling 
back. 

There was one living in the West at that time, " Bottomless 
Bagge," Sir James Bagge, and it is to no other than Arch- 
bishop Laud that he must be thankful for his characteristic 
patronymic. Did our space permit, we should like to devote a 
page or two to the development of the character of this worthy. 
He was Buckingham's choice, and a most worthy agent for the 
West ; he had a profound genius for servilities, meannesses, 
and rascalities of every kind ; he was a man who could lick the 
blacking off a great man's boots, and swear that it was better 
than port wine ; it was he who offered the £^ to the French- 
men for their £Zo. We see in him the cur constantly snap- 
ping round about the heels of Eliot, and always with the same 
sinuous sanctity — his fragrant name is an ointment poured 
forth, with a large flavoring of asafoetida ; a truculent rascal, a 
genuine Barnacle, a great high-priest of the Circumlocution 
oihce, embodying in himself a premature aptitude of chicane 
and red tape, which might make him a study even in these 
modern days. The rascal does not seem to have got the worst 
of it. Eliot was often imprisoned ; Coke, Phillipps, and other 
brave men, as we know, suffered, and that joyfully, the spoil- 
ing of their goods and their persons ; but " Bottomless 
Bagge," with an admirable eel-like slipperiness, always found 
himself on some comfortable couch of glittering mud. The 
character of the man is well portrayed in Mr. Forster's " Life 
of Eliot ": his peculations, his serviUties, his smiling face>be- 
fore, his stealthy hand behind the curtain, his hints about his 
own family, his personal meritorious demerits. He seems to 
have feathered himself well from the failing of the Cadiz expe- 
dition : he victualed the ships, and one contemporary speaks 
of his conduct in that matter as worthy of the halter. But, *" 
bad as Bagge was, it was necessary to strike higher. A cry of 
shame and indignation rose from the whole nation, and Eliot ' 
led up and organized the Parliament to a charge upon Buck- 
ingham as the one grand delinquent. The king interposed for 
his favorite, and wrote an autograph letter to the House, in 
reply to their demand for redresses before they granted new 
supplies. 

"I must let you know," he continued, suddenly letting 
loose the thought he could no longer mask or control, " that I 
will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you, 
much less such as are of eminent place and near unto me, 
. , . I see you especially aim at the Duke of BucTdngham. 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN ELIOT. 53 

I wonder what hath so altered your affection toward him ? 
. . . What hath he done since the last Parliament of my 
father's time, to alter and change your minds ? I wot not ; 
but can assure you he hath not meddled or done anything con- 
cerning the public, or commonwealth, but by special directions 
and appointment, and as my servant. ... I would you 
would hasten for my supply, or else it will be worse for your- 
selves ; for if any evil happen, I think I shall be the last that 
shall feel it." 

Grandly Eliot remarked to the House, when the letter of the 
king was read, " We have had a representation of great fear, 
but I hope it will not darken our understandings." The mes- 
sage of the king seems only to have led Eliot to a piercing and 
most eloquent analysis in the House of the nature of monarchy 
and kingly office. This speech produced an immense excite- 
ment. The next day the mad-headed king called the Houses 
to attend him at Whitehall. He told them he had " to give 
thanks to the Lords, but none to the Commons, whose fault it 
was his purpose to control." He demanded supplies sufficient 
and unconditional. If not granted, the House would be dis- 
solved. " Remember," said the king, " that ^Parliaments are 
altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolu- 
tion ; and therefore, as I find the fruits of them good or evil, 
they are to continue or not to be." We can ourselves conceive 
how great was the consternation which must have been pro- 
duced by such a speech. The next day the House met, sat 
with locked doors, placed the key in the Speaker's hand, and 
forbade any member to leave the House, a practice then very 
unusual. Then Eliot rose, a resolute man, through whose lips 
how much more kingly a soul expressed itself than that of the 
weak, pettish, and merely obstinate king! He said, "The 
House met neither to do what the king should command them, 
nor to abstain where he should forbid them, and therefore they 
should continue constant to maintain their privileges, and not 
do either more or less for what had been said to them." And 
while uttering these and like words, and moving a remon- 
strance to the king, the House cried, "Well spoken, Sir Jol^. 
Eliot ! " And then, of course, what should follow but the 
impeachment of the duke .? 

No doubt the speech in which Buckingham was impeached 
is a great speech. Probably nothing of which we have any 
knowledge or recollection could have so expressed the natural 
indignation of the House and of the whole enraged kingdom. 
Wrath which had been gathering for vears broke forth ; crimes 



54 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

patent to all knowledge, unblushing in their effrontery, were 
pointed to and brought out into the clear light of the parlia- 
mentary countenance ; nor did the speaker hesitate for a mo- 
ment in his dignified career of accusation because he knew the 
impossibility of delivering such a crimination and denunciation 
without, in some measure, impeaching the king, and placing 
himself, not only beneath royal displeasure, but within the 
reach of royal punishment. All came in for condemnation : 
the St. Peter, of Newhaven ; the treason of Rochelle ; the ex- 
tortions and exactions upon East Indian and other merchants. 
" No right, no interest, may withstand him. Through the 
powers of state and justice he has dared ever to strike at his 
own ends. Your lordships have had this sufficiently expressed 
in the case of the St. Peter, and by the ships at Dieppe." He 
then advanced to the astounding illustration of the personal, 
aggrandizement of the man : "I am raised," he exclaimed, 
" to observe a wonder — a wonder both in policy and nature." 

" My lords, I have done. You see the man ! What have 
been his actions, whom he is like, you know. I leave him to 
youi judgments. This only is conceived by us, the knights, 
citizens, and burgesses of the Commons House of Parliament, 
that by him came all our evils, in him we find the causes, and 
on him must be the remedies. To this end we are now ad- 
dressed to your lordships, in confidence of your justice, to 
which some late examples and your wisdoms invite us. We 
can not doubt your lordships. The greatness, the power, the 
practice of the whole world, we know to be all inferior to your 
greater judgments ; and from thence we take assurance. To 
that, therefore, we now refer him ; there to be examined, there 
to be tried ; and in due time from thence we shall express 
such judgment as his cause merits." 

The king's wrath broke all bounds, and early the next day 
Eliot was in the Tower. When a reference by Eliot to 
Sejanus had been reported to the king, he exclaimed, " Implic- 
itly he must intend me for Tiberius ! " He hastened to the 
Lords. With Buckingham by his side he vindicated himself 
and his minister from the " vile and malicious calumnies of 
the Commons." The arrest of Eliot had been swift and secret. 
Arrested in the House, still his imprisonment, with that of 
Digges, was for a short time unknown. When it did become 
known, although Mr. Pym rose to counsel moderation, the 
House would not hear him. " Rise ! rise ! rise ! " was shouted 
on all sides. " No business till we are righted in our liber- 
ties." It was the same the next day when the Speaker at- 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN ELIOT. 55 

tempted to proceed with the business of the House. " Sit 
down, sit down ! " was the universal cry. " N'^ business till 
We are righted in our hberties ! " Digg'es was instantly 
liberated, against him nothing could be alleged in compairisbti 
with the high misdemeanors of Eliot. As he resumed his seat 
the House turned itself into a grand committee concerning Sir 
John Eliot. His papers had been seized, efforts were made 
to prove him the head of a conspiracy, and it was resolved to 
put him to the question. So still in the Coittittons went oil tile 
indignation, and in the Tower the examination, and the Com- 
mons pertinaciously would attend to no business, nor be quiet 
until he was released. He was released, and took his place 
again amid the joyful manifestations of his fellow members \ 
rising directly in his place^ and requesting to hear what was 
charged against him, that he might show by his answer whether 
he was worthy to sit there. The poor king, as in every move- 
ment, of his political life, lost greatly by this transaction ; and 
yet it produced so little good upon his own mind, that years 
after he was none the less willing to jeopardize his position by 
attempting to arrest Hampden and Pym, Clamor and debate 
went on within the House, and men's hearts failed them for 
fear without. While the Remonstrance was passing, a wild 
storm broke over London. Wind and hail, rain, lightning 
and thunder, the like of it was never known in the memory of 
living man : the churchyard walls. were broken down, the earth 
rent and torn from the graves, revealing, so it is said, the 
faces of the dead ; supernatural shapes in the mist hung brood- 
ing over the Thames, and the superstitious saw misty shape 
and storm and tempest bearing on and beating against the 
house of the Duke of Buckingham, its stairs and its walls. 
Storms were moving toward York House too. The next day 
the House was summoned by the king to hear the commission 
of dissolution. The Commons knew their crafty king. They 
had passed in haste their remonstrance. The Speaker was 
instructed how to act ; he approached the throne, holding up 
the "Great Remonstrance " as he approached, and craved 
compliance with its " humble petition for the removal of that 
great person, the Duke of Buckingham, from access to your 
royal presence." Without a word the dissolution followed. 
And even while the commission was read, members were 
seen reading copies of this which has been through all time 
called the " Great Remonstrance ; " and so the House, led on 
by Eliot, had done its determined work. The Remonstrance 
had been accomplished just in time; in a few days it would 



56 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

be in the hands of the people, and would tell why the king 
had once more so rudely dismissed his Parliament. 

For two years the king governed by prerogative, and it may 
be supposed that the failure to punish Eliot would not make 
the king and his minister the more pleasant and affectionate 
in their feelings toward the patriot. " Bottomless Bagge " 
and Buckingham, between them, devised a form of conspiracy 
against Eliot. He still held his office of Vice-Admiral, and 
an effort was made to get up a case against him in connection 
with his office ; and there was a draft of a paper of a peculiar 
kind inquiring " whether Sir John may not be sequestered in 
the mean time ; " in fact, whether he could not be struck with- 
out the awkwardness of being heard. Eliot stood between a 
Hamburg merchantman and a gang of Welsh pirates , this 
again seemed to be in some way an infraction of the Lord 
Admiral's designs and ideas. Several cases are recited dur- 
ing this period of the government by prerogative, in which 
" Bottomless Bagge's " foul play, and the vile connivance of 
the Council are brought out conspicuously. " Honesty among 
them," says Mr. Forster, "was only a commodity to deal in — 
too scarce to be wasted ; and to any share of it such people 
as Sir John Eliot could have no claim." We next find Eliot, 
in those days of prerogative, refusing the loan, the celebrated 
loan, of which John Hampden said, " I could be content to 
lend as well as others, but I should fear to draw upon myself 
the curse in Magna Charta, which should be read twice a 
year, against those who infringe it." Eliot issued a public 
appeal through the West against the loan, and grounded his 
resistance to it upon its essentially unconstitutional character. 
Bagge, who in addition to being a rascal, was an exceeding ass, 
wrote to show that the much-vaunted Magna Charta, which 
Eliot magnified, was a mere abortion ; he laughed at the 
Barons and their rebellious armies in the meadows of Staines, 
and called their meeting together " satanical," and Eliot is 
" satanical," too, for citing it. About this business Eliot 
found his way into the Gatehouse. The nation raised a loud 
outcry for a Parliament. It had been hoped that Eliot might 
have been outlawed ; at any rate, it was hoped that he might 
be excluded from a Parliament. Alas ! when he was released, 
it was only to be received with rapture throughout Cornwall, 
and to be returned, not as member for Newport, but as 
knight of the shire. Thus the man most disaffected to the 
Duke and the Court appeared with half the country at his 
heels in the third Parliament of Charles I. : that ominous 



CONTEMPORARJES: SIR JOHN ELIOT. 57 

Parliament, than which only another was more fearful to the 
king. It met in March, 1628. Eliot was then thirty-eight 
years old, and had only four more years to live at all. How 
much to be done in those four years ! The king at once told 
his Commons that he only called them together that they 
should vote him sufficient supply. He trusted they would 
not give way to the follies of particular men. The " partic- 
ular men," however, entered the House with the same resolu- 
tion the}- exhibited two years before. Eliot was one of the 
first speakers upon those grounds of offense growing out 
of the resistence of Nonconformity to prelatical assumptions. 
How eloquent are the following words, and how do their for- 
cible expressions enlighten us on the character of the man ! 

" Religion," he proceeded, "is the chief virtue of a man, 
devotion and religion ; and of devotion, prayer and fasting 
are the chief characters. Let these be corrupted in their use, 
the devotion is corrupt. If the devotion be once tainted, the 
religion is impure. It then, denying the power of godliness, 
becomes but an outward form ; and, as it is concluded in the 
text, a religion that is in vain. Of such religion in this place, 
or at these times, I impeach no man. Let their own con- 
sciences accuse them. Of such devotion I make no judgment 
upon others, but leave them tp the Searcher of all hearts. 
This only for caution I address to you : that if any of us have 
been guilty in this kind, let us now here repent it. And let 
us remember that repentance is not in words. It is not a 
''Lord ! Lord I ' that will carry us into heaven, but the doing 
the will of our Father which is in heaven. And to undo our 
country is not to do that will. It is not that Father's will that 
we should betray that mother. Religion, repentance, prayer, 
these are not private contracts to the public breach and 
prejudice. There must be a sincerity in it all ; a throughout 
integrity and perfection, that our words and works be an- 
swerable. If our actions correspond not to our words, our 
successes will not be better than our hearts. When such 
neai kindred differ, strangers may be at odds ; and the pre- 
vention of this evil is the chief reason that I move for. Nor 
is it without cause that this motion does proceed. If we 
reflect upon the former passages of this place, much might be 
thence collected to support the propriety of the caution. But 
the desire is better, to reforrrt errors than to remember them. 
My affections strive for the happiness of this meeting, but it 
must be had from God. It is His blessing though our crown. 
Let us for Him, therefore, in all sincerity expect it ; and if any 



5S OLIVER CROMWELL, 

by vain shadows would delude us, let us distinguish between 
true substances and those shadows. It is religion, and not 
the name of religion, that must guide us ; that in the truth 
thereof we may with all unity be concordant : not turning it 
into subtlety and art, playing with God as with the powers of 
men : but in the sincerity of our souls doing that work we 
came for. Which now I most humbly move, and pray for 
that blessing from above." 

His attacks upon the illegalities of the last two years were 
as brave as before : the state of maritime affairs — the suspen- 
sion and violation of statutes. With much condemnation, 
however, a vote of five subsidies was granted to the king ; but 
the time when the collection was to be made, or the Bill intro- 
duced, was not mentioned. The House immovably resolved 
that both were to depend on the good faith of the king. It 
was the greatest grant ever made in Parliament. The Secre- 
tary, on behalf of the king, proceeded to thank the House, 
but coupled thanks of Buckingham with thanks of the king. 
Sir John Eliot leaped up, and taxed Mr. Secretary with in- 
termingling a subject's speech with the king's message : " in 
that House they knew of no other distinction but that of king 
and subjects." W^hereupon many of the House made exclam- 
ation, " Well spoken^ Sir JoJm Eliot !^^ 

There were, to our minds, some extraordinary subjects of 
debate, especially on the king's claim to commit without cause 
shown on the face of the warrant. " The greatest question," 
exclaimed Pym, '' that ever was in this place or elsewhere ! " 
Sexden and Coke both spoke upon it. " What," answered 
Coke, " shall I accept such law ? Shall I have a state of in- 
heritance for life, or for years, in my land, and shall I be a 
tenant at will, for my liberty ! A freeman to be a tenant at 
will for his freedom ! There is no such tenure in all Little- 
ton." We follow with earnest interest those discussions in 
which Eliot took so great and prominent a part, out of which 
came into existence the immortal Petition of Rights. These 
are great debates, greater debates are not recorded in history. 
" Magna Charta is such a fellow," said Coke, " he will have 
no Sovereign." The great charter of the people's liberties was 
upheld and strengthened by the Petition of Rights. 

And it is in the course of these debates that the stately fonn 
of Wentworth, afterward Earl of Strafford, rises to the life. 
Wentworth's was no vulgar ambition ; there is little reason to 
think that any such spirit, textured as his was, could have any 
hearty sympathies with the people or with freedom. True, 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR JOHN ELIOT, 59 

his voice was also heard in favor of the great Petition of 
Rights ; but Mr. Forster has very distinctly brought out the 
reason of this. He had been thwarted by Buckingham, and 
the majestic and powerful man — to whom, in the great gallery 
of statesmen, Buckingham bore some such resemblance as a 
butterfly might bear to an eagle — taught the favorite more 
rightly to estimate his power. Wentworth had been refused 
the Presidentship of York. He became the most ardent sup- 
porter of the Petition of Rights. He was insulted by Buck- 
ingham. He revenged, in an instant and remarkable manner, 
the insult. It was speedily atoned, and as speedily forgiven ; 
and then Wentworth is before us with a cloud of eloquent 
words, attempting to evaporate, or pour some haze round, an 
apparent burst of indignant eloquence, when he found him- 
self on a previous night in company with the great voices of 
the defenders of the people. Jt is a picture on which we like 
to look — these two unquestionably foremost men of their par- 
ties, Eliot and Wentworth, in their famous duel. Eliot rose 
immediately with ease, to measure himself with his formidable 
antagonist. In a noble speech, he appealed to Wentworth 
against Wentworth. There was no man in the House better 
fitted to appreciate the singular dignity and grandeur of Eliot's 
spirit than this dark, majestic complotter against the liber- 
ties of England. Eliot printed himself ineflaceably on Went- 
worth's mind ; and twelve years later, when the mesh was 
almost woven, he nerved himself for conflict — when Eliot was 
all dust beneath the Tower Green, and hours of danger were 
leaping rapidly upon himself^-by calling up the image of his 
old antagonist ; and no finer tribute was offered to the mem- 
ory of Eliot than Wentworth uttered when he said, " Sound 
or lame, I shall be with you before the beginning of Parlia 
ment. I should not fail, though Sir John Eliot were living." 
In the discussion on which we are now looking, Eliot obtained 
an easy victory over the dark, ambitious man, whose day was 
hastening on, though not yet come. As we read the story of 
his life, it stirs feelings of pride for our country, and homage 
for the men who have glorified and adorned it. We must 
pass over the strong language and persisted remonstrances to 
the king on the conduct of his minister. The report of the 
Committee of Trade was a lamentable one. The losses by 
pirates continued to be amazing ; two hundred and forty-eight 
ships, of a hundred tons and upward, had been seized and 
lost between Dover and Newcastle. Seamen were wronged 
by inadequate wages and uncertain payment, and the want 



6o OLIVER CROMWELL, 

of hospitals for their reception was shown. As the events 
drive forward through the House, what scenes those are which 
meet us — a whole House in tears, and such a House ! Not a 
congregation of weak, feeble minds, but strong, sagacious law- 
yers, daring, resolute men, all aghast at the desolation falling 
on the country. Speeches were interdicted by messages from 
the king, until at last, in response to a speech of the octogena- 
rian Sir Edward Coke, that " the author of all these miseries 
was the Duke of Buckingham," strange shouts arose on every 
side, and a loud cry was heard of " The Duke, the Duke ! ^tis 
he, 'tis he ! " In the midst of all, while Eliot was engaged in 
unwebbing the abominations and the intricacies of the Court, 
death served his adversaries a good turn, A heavy calamity 
fell upon Eliot. We read on Friday, June 20th, in the Com- 
mons' Journal, a notice, " Sir John Eliot, in respect of the 
death of his wife, has leave to go down into the country , " 
and the Impeachment of the great national foe was set aside 
by another unexpected circumstance, too, on the 23d of Au- 
gust, this 1628. A man went into " the church which stood 
by the conduit in Fleet Street," and left his name to be prayed 
for on the Sunday following, as a man disordered in his mind , 
then he went to a cutler's shop on Tower Hill, and bought a 
tenpenny dagger-knife, and upon a paper which he pinned to 
the lining of his hat he wrote the name " John Felton," after- 
ward the assassin of Buckingham, and these words r 

" That man is cowardly, base, and deserveth not the name 
of a gentleman or soldier, that is not willinge to sacrifice his 
life for the honor of his God, his kinge, and his countrie. 
Lett noe man commend me for doinge of it, but rather dis- 
commend themselves as the cause of it, for if God had not 
taken away our hearts for our sinnes, he would not have gone 
so longe unpunished." 

We shall soon be with Eliot in his last scenes. He arrived 
irt London for the last time on the 30th of December, 1628. 
Things were getting worse and worse. We come at last to"^the 
scene of the 29th of March, 1629 ; then EHot made his last 
speech. Although the Speaker had the king's command for 
adjournment, Eliot continued to speak, Denzil, Holies, and 
Valentine meantime holding the Speaker in his chair. Amid 
gathering excitement, he presented the Declaration drawn up 
by the Committee of Trade ; the Speaker refused to receive it, 
the clerk refused to read it. Against the call of the most 
distinguished members, the Speaker still refused. Still the 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR fOHN ELIOT. 61 

Declaration was eventually read and put to the vote, and 
the House was in an uproar. 

In the history of the House of Commons, the scene which 
was now acting stands upon the pages of our great national 
story as not only one of the most exciting and memorable, 
but one of the most important. Eliot stands out as the chief 
actor in that great scene. A messenger from the king came 
down to the House, but sought in vain to obtain an entrance : 
amid the din Eliot's voice rose clear, firm, and strong : he 
carried the Declaration by a vast majority ; amid the repeated 
knockings of the Black Rod seeking admittance at the door, 
and with prophetic pathos, he said, " As for myself, I further 
protest, as I am a gentleman, if my fortune be ever again 
to meet in this honorable assembly, where I now leave I 
will begin again anew." A shout of assent carried the 
Declaration against all illegal taxation, and against all inno- 
vations in the religion of the State. Then the doors were open- 
ed, and the members rushed out, carrying away with them the 
king's officers who were standing and waiting for admission. 
It was the last time Eliot appeared in Parliament. The next 
day he was close prisoner in the Tower, and from the grip of 
Charles he never escaped again alive. There was not an 
other Parliament for eleven years. 

Eliot was fined ;^2ooo ; he very likely increased the spite of 
the king by taking precautions against his pouncing upon this 
valuable little peculation ;• he said he had two cloaks, a few 
books, a few pair of boots, and that was all his personal 
substance, and if they could turn this into ;^2ooo, much good 
it might do them. So the sheriffs appointed to seize upon his 
possessions in Cornwall, for the king, were obliged to return 
a nihil. He secured his property in trust for his sons, and 
those he committed ta the care of John Hampden ; and he 
directed his upholsterer to do what could be done to make his 
cell comfortable in the Tower, ihere he took up his residence, 
there he spent the remainder of his days, there he wrote the 
" Monarchy of Man," which Mr. John Forster has now made 
tolerably familiar to English readers, and which shows the mas- 
ter of the eloquent tongue to have been equally master of the 
eloquent pen and eloquent prose, and whose stateliness places 
its writer on the same level with the authors of " Areopa- 
gitica," and the first books of the " Ecclesiastical Polity." 
Our knowledge of Sir John EHot has largely increased since 
Disraeli the elder wrote his Commentaries ; in fact, at that 
time, the story of Eliot was almost a blank in our history. 



62 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Disraeli said, '^ The harshness of Charles toward Eliot, to me 
indicates a cause of offense either of a deeper dye or a more per- 
sonal nature than perhaps we have yet discovered." In fact, it 
was Disraeli's desire to show that the great affairs in which 
Eliot took part moved upon the wheels of private grudges, 
and such private grudges are manifest enough in the conduct 
of Charles, but not in that of Eliot ; the most careful investi- 
gation only shows how ardently patriotic and pure were the 
motives of this great herald of the Revokition. 

Through all the shuffling of judges, and the dodging of 
courtiers, and their " Bottomless Bagges," we can not follow 
the imprisoned patriot's history. When a mean spirit gets a 
majestic one into its power, we know what follows. A cat 
would care for a nightingale, a tiger for an antelope, as little 
as Charles Stuart cared for John Eliot, and their relations 
were very similar. The pretexts for his detention were vari- 
ous and singular. Then came hours of sickness — the frame 
was broken down with cold and watching, but the spirit was 
unbroken still. All his efforts to obtain release were in vain, 
and the Tower finally closed upon him. Eliot was dying of 
consumption. Charles was repeatedly petitioned, but peti- 
tioned in vain, to remit some portion of the cheerless discom- 
fort of his illegal imprisonment. He died the 27th of Novem- 
ber, 1632. The king was petitioned by Eliot's son that he 
would permit the body of his father to be carried to the 
ancestral vaults in Cornwall ; the king coldly replied, " Let 
Sir John Eliot's body be buried in the church of the parish 
where he died." His dust lies in the chapel of the Tower. 
How welcome the tidings were at Whitehall that the great 
juror on the crimes of tyrants, the vindicator of the freedom 
of the people, had gone away, we can well believe ; he would 
torment tyrants and traitors and parasites and Stuarts no 
more. He died in his forty-third year. And yet there are 
those even still living, who maintain that the Revolution was 
unnecessary, and call Charles an injured and martyred king. 
Eliot was the great precursor who showed the necessity fof 
Cromwell ; was it not time that Cromwell should come 1 



\ 



THE LORD OF THE FENSr 63 



CHAPTER IV. 

CROMWELL, "the LORD OF THE FENS," ^ AND FIRST APPEAR- 
ANCE IN PARLIAMENT. 

From our discursive view of the times and character of 
James, and the earHer and obscure years of the life of Cromwell, 
we now enter upon his more public career. The first occa- 
sion of his appearance in any service connected with the pub- 
lic, was upon the attempt made by the needy Charles to 
wrest, for the purposes of his exchequer, from the Earl of Bed- 
ford and the people, the fens which had been drained. The 
case has been variously stated. The brief history is somewhat 
as follows : 

In those days some millions of acres of the finest plains in 
the counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, and 
Lincoln, lay undrained. Several years before the period to 
which we now refer, the Earl of Oxford and other noblemen 
of that day had proposed to drain large portions of them, 
and in fact had done so. The Bedford Level, containing 
nearly 400,000 acres, had been completed, when it was found 
necessary to call in other aid \ and a proposition was made to 
the Crown, offering a fair proportion of the land for its assist- 
ance and authority in the completion of the whole. 

Until now all had gone on well , but hungry Charles saw 
here an opportunity of gratifying his cupidity. A number of 
commissioners came from the king to Huntingdon \ they, in- 
structed by the king's own letter, proceeded to lay claim under 
various pretexts, such as corrupt and servile ministers know 
. how to use, to 95,000 acres of land already drained, Crom- 
well stepped upon the stage of action, and the draining of the 
fens was entirely stopped. Many writers affect to put a bad 
construction upon this first public act of Cromwell's ; while, to 
any but horny eyes, the reason of the whole business is most 
obvious. 

'* The Protector's enemies would persuade us that his oppo- 
sition to Charles's interference arose out of the popular objec- 
tion, supported by him, to the project itself ; and, that the end 
he proposed to himself, and obtained, was its hindrance ; for- 
getting that if his, or the general wish, had been to impede 



64 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

the work, the time that would have been chosen for the at- 
tempt would have been at the revival of the idea, some seven 
or eight years previously, and not that, when so large a portion 
of it was accomplished in the completion (nearly) of the real 
Bedford Level. But the obvious utility of the undertaking 
would alone render the idea of extended opposition to it, 
grounded on its own merits, unlikely ; and particularly as to 
Cromwell, from his known approbation and encouragement 
afterward afforded to all such public-spirited schemes, and the 
thanks he actually received from William, the next Earl of 
Bedford, for his promotion of this identical one. It is proper 
to observe, that though the above-given account of this whole 
transaction is from Nalson Cole, who as ' Register to the Cor- 
poration of Bedford Level,' was doubtless generally well in- 
formed, yet that it diifers from that writer in stating the drain- 
age of the Level to have been neai-ly, and not fully, completed 
at the time of the king's interposition. That it was not then 
fully completed appears from an Act, much forwarded by 
Cromwell., in 1649, which runs : 'And whereas Francis, late 
Earl of Bedford, did undertake the said work, and had ninety- 
five thousand acres, parcel of the said great level, decreed 
and set forth, in the thirteenth of the late King Charles, in 
recompense thereof ; and he and his participators, and their 
heirs and assigns had made a good progress therein.' " ^ 

Even Mr. Forster puts a forced construction upon Cromwell's 
opposition to the king \ for he roused up the country, and the 
draining now became impossible. His name was sounded to 
and fro as a second Hereward. He was long after, and is to 
this day, called " the Lord of the Fens." Why was this ? 
There could be nothing in the mere fact of opposing the making 
the watery wastes habitable calculated to arouse so stormy an 
opposition. The thing was most desirable \ but, to drain them 
so — to give additional power to the bad Crown — nay, to consent 
to the dishonest forfeiture of the lands of the men who labored 
first at this desirable scheme ! Here was the cause ! — the 
claim of the king is unjust ! It is not wise nor right that the 
king should have power here. Resist him and his commission- 
ers. Cromwell did ; as Hampden said, " He set well at the 
mark," defeated monarch and commissioners ; and, after ac- 
quiring no small degree of notice and fame, he retired again 
into obscurity and silence. 

Not long ! His days of silence and quiet were now well- 

♦ Thomas Cromwell's " Life of Cromwell," pp. 70, 71. 



« THE LORD OF THF FENS:' 65 

nigh over. Charles was compelled to " summon a Parlia- 
ment," he wanted money ; he only wanted a Parliament to 
help him to get it ; — it was long since a Parliament had met. 
Parliament, when it met, determined that there were other 
things to which to attend beside granting the king money; 
that ominous short Parliament was a memorable one, and con- 
tained in it many memorable men, Knolles, Hampden, Eliot, 
Selden, and Cromwell as member for .Huntingdon. This 
appearance of our hero was but for a very brief period, but it 
would introduce him to the most noticeable men of the popular 
interest. Forster has drawn a portrait in which there is great 
mingled power, freedom, and truth ; it is an imaginary sketch 
of Oliver's first appearance in Parliament, in company with his 
cousin, John Hampden. 

" Let us suppose," says he, " that he and Hampden entered 
tlie House together at- the momentous opening of that famous 
Parliament — two men already linked together by the bonds of 
counsel and friendship, yet more that by those of family, but 
presenting how strange a contrast to each other in all things 
save the greatness of their genius. The one of exquisite mild 
deportment, of ever civil and affable manners, with a counte- 
nance that at once expressed the dignity of his intellect, and 
the sweetness of his nature ; and even in his dress, arranged 
with scrupulous nicety and care, announcing the refinement of 
his mind. The other, a figure of no mean mark, but oh, how 
unlike that ! His gait clownish, his dress ill-made and slov- 
enly, his manners coarse and abrupt, and face such as men look 
on with a vague feeling of admiration and dislike ! The fea- 
tures cut, as it were, out of a piece of gnarled and knotty oak ; 
the nose large and red ; the cheeks coarse, warted, wrinkled, 
and sallow ; the eyebrows huge and shaggy, but, glistening 
from beneath them, eyes full of depth and meaning, and, when 
turned to the gaze, pierced through and through the gazer ; 
above these, again, a noble forehead, whence, on either side, 
an open flow of hair * round from his parted forelock manly 
hangs,' clustering ; and over all, and pervading all, that un- 
definable aspect of greatness, alluded to by the poet Dryden 
when he spoke of the face of Cromwell as one that 

...."' did imprint an awe, 
And naturally all souls to his did bow, 
As wands of divination downward draw, 
And point to beds where sovereign gold doth grow.* 

Imagine, then, these two extraordinary men, now for the first 
5 



66 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

time together passing along tlie crowded lobbies of that most 
famous assembly — Hampden greeting his friends as he passes, 
stopping now and then, perhaps, to introduce his country kins- 
man to the few whose curiosity had mastered the first emotion 
inspired by the singular stranger, but pushing directly forward 
toward a knot of active and eager faces that are clustered round 
a little spot near the bar of the House, on the right of the 
Speaker's chair, in the midst of which stand Sir John Eliot; 
Sir Robert Philips, and Pym. The crowd made way for 
Hampden — the central figures of that group receive him among 
them with deference and gladness — he introduces his cousin 
Cromwell — and, among the great spirits whom that little spot 
contains, the clownish figure, the awkward gait, the slovenly 
dress, pass utterly unheeded, for in his first few words' they 
have discovered the fervor, and perhaps suspected the great- 
ness*, of this accession to their cause." 

The brief interruption to Cromwell's silent life, his return 
for the borough of Huntingdon, was, as we have seen and 
said, the only one, until he took his seat in the fourth' Parlia- 
ment of Charles I. for Cambridge. His election was most 
obstinately contested, and he was returned at last by the ma- 
jority of a single vote ; his antagonist was Cleaveland, the 
poet. " That vote," exclaimed Cleaveland, " hath ruined 
both Church and kingdom." 

One then is inclined to inquire, what then had been the 
consequence had Cromwell not been returned ; yet, perhaps, 
the consequence had not been materially different, for the 
Parliamentary duties appear to have sat very lightly upon 
him. He spoke but seldom, and briefly ; it was without, in 
the world, among the people in decided action, that he ap- 
peared greatest. The particulars of him at this time are very 
full. A Royalist contemporaiy. Sir Philip Warwick, writes 
thus : " The first time I ever took notice of him was in the 
beginning of the Parliament held in November, 1640, when I 
vainly thought myself a courtly young gentleman (for we cour- 
tiers valued ourselves much upon our good clothes). I came 
into the House one morning, well clad, and perceived a gen- 
tleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily appareled ; 
for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made 
by an ill country tailor ; his linen was plain, and not very 
clean ; and I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little 
band, which was not much larger than his collar ; his hat was 
without a hat-band. His stature was of good size ; sword 
stuck close to his side ; his countenance swollen and reddish : 



« THE LORD OF THE FENSy (rj 

his voice sharp and untuneable ; and his eloquence full of fervor 
— for the subject-matter would not bear much of reason, it 
being in behalf of a servant of Mr. Prynne's, who had dis- 
persed libels against the Queen for her dancing, and such 
like innocent and courtly sports ; and he aggravated the im- 
prisonment of his man by the council table to that height, 
that one would have believed the very Government itself 
had been in great danger by it. I sincerely profess it 
lessened my reverence unto that great council, for he was 
very much hearkened unto. And yet I lived to see this very 
gentleman, whom, out of no ill will to him, I thus describe, 
by multiplied good success, and by real but usurped power 
(having had a better tailor, and more converse among good 
company) in my own eye, when for six weeks together I 
was a prisoner in his sergeant's hands, and daily waited at 
Whitehall, appear of a great and majestic deportment ^and 
comely presence." * 

This description of Cromwell's negligence in the article of 
dress is corroborated by the story we have already told that 
Lord Digby, one day going down the stairs of the Parliament 
House, with Hampden, and inquiring of the latter, not knov/ing 
Oliver personally, who "that sloven " was — "That sloven,'' 
replied Hampden, " whom you see before you, that sloveti, I 
say, if we should ever come to a breach with the king, which 
God forbid ! — in such a case, I say, that sloven will be the 
greatest man in England." 

And to quote once more : a passage from one of Dr. South's 
sermons will give us a hint of the general estimation of the ap- 
pearance of the future Protector ; that same South, by the bye, 
who wrote a fine Latin eulogy upon the " bankrupt, beggarly 
fellow," at the time Cromwell was Chancellor of Oxford and 
Magistrate of Great Britain. " Who," said that conscientious 
divine, " who that had beheld such a ba?ikrupt, beggarly fellow 
as Cromwell, first entering the Parliament House, with a 
threadbai-e torn coat a?id a greasy hat (and perhaps neither of 
them paid for), could have suspected that in the course of so 
few years he should, by the murder of one king and the ban- 
ishment of another, ascend the throne, be invested with royal 
robes, and want nothing of the state of a king but the chang- 
ing of his hat into a crown." " ' Odds fish Lory ! ' exclaimed 
the laughing Charles, when he heard this from the divine who 
had panegyrized the living Protector ; * odds fish, man ! your 

* Sec " Memoirs of Sir Philip Warwick." 



68 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

chaplain must be a bishop. Put me in mind of him at the 
next vacancy.' Oh, glorious time for the Church ! Oh, 
golden age for the Profligate and the Slave ! " ^ 

There, then, you see him in the House, that famous Long 
Parliament — the most remarkable Parliament ever summoned 
to sit in the history of the English nation. By this time, you 
may be sure, Cromwell and Hampden were the two most noted 
men of the popular party : the one the defeater of the king in 
the lordship of the fens, and the other a still more celebrated 
man from his supposed defeat by the king in the affair of the 
ship-money, an unjust subsidy levied by the king, and stoutly 
challenged by John Hampden on behalf of all England. There 
was need for action ; the king had extended the forests of the 
country, at the same time he cut down from the forest land the 
trees, and thus destroyed the store of the country's shipping. 
By the gross illegal seizure of ship-money, he secured to him- 
self ;^7oo,ooo per annum, while our seas were left unguarded, 
and Turkish pirates ranged them uncontrolled. Charles was 
determined to govern by prerogative, and not by Parliament. 
He sold privileges for every unjust exaction. A patent for the 
manufacture of soap was sold ; a very sad affliction indeed, for 
in addition to the costly price from the existence of the mo- 
nopoly for which ;^i 0,000 had been paid, the linen had been 
burned, and the flesh as well, in the washing; so that the city 
of London was visited by an insurrection of women, and the 
Lord Mayor was reprimanded by the king because he gave 
them his sympathy. Every item almost was taxed. Hackney 
coaches were prohibited because sedan chairs appeared for the 
first time — Sir Sanders Duncombe having purchased from the 
king the right to carry people up and down in them. We can 
not catalogue all the profitable items of little tyranny. It was 
an exasperating time. 

And in that Long Parliament, what things were to pass be- 
fore Cromwell's eye before the last decisive steps were taken ! 
How must even his energetic mind have received new and in- 
vigorating impulses from finding himself surrounded by so 
many brave and daring companions. Scarcely, indeed, had 
the Parliament met, before it proceeded to impeach Strafford, 
that mighty master-stroke, by which the powerful oppressor 
was in a moment cast down — a prisoner in the hands of the 
people whose liberties he had so repeatedly outraged, and so 
daringly and contemptuously scoffed at- and insulted — a pris- 

♦ Forster. 



*' THE LORD OF THE FENS." 69 

oner, until liberated only by the hands of the executioner. 
Daring indeed were the deeds of this Parliament : " A Bill 
was proposed," says Guizot, in his summary " History of the 
English Revolution," "January 19th, 1 641, which prescribed 
the calling a Parliament ' every three years, at most." If the 
king did not convoke one, twelve peers, assembled in West- 
minster, might summon one without his co-operation; in de- 
fault of this, the sheriffs and municipal officers were to proceed 
with the elections. If the sheriffs neglected to see to it, the 
citizens had a right to assemble and elect representatives. No 
Parliament could be dissolved or adjourned without the con- 
sent of the two Houses, till fifty days after its meeting ; and to 
the Houses alone belonged the choice of their respective 
Speakers. At the first news of this Bill, the king quitted the 
silence in which he had shut himself up, and assembling both 
Houses at Whitehall, January 23d, said : * I like to have fre^ 
quent Parliaments, as the best means to preserve that right un- 
derstanding between me and my subjects which I so earnestly 
desire. But to give power to sheriffs and constables, and I 
know not whom, to do my office, that I can not yield to.* The 
House only saw in these words a new motive to press forward 
the adoption of the Bill. None dared counsel the king to 
refuse it ; he yielded, but in doing so, thought it due to his 
dignity to show the extent of his displeasure. He said,. ' I do 
not know for what you can ask, that I can hereafter make any 
question to yield unto you ; so far, truly, I have had no 
encouragement to oblige you, for you have gone on in that 
which concerns yourselves, and not those things which merely 
concern the strength of this kingdom. You have taken the 
government almost to pieces, and I may say, it is almost off its 
hinges. A skillful watchmaker, to make clean his watch, will 
take it asunder, and _when it is put together again it will go 
all the better, so that he leaves not out one pin of it. Now, 
as I have done my part, you know what to do on yours.' — Feb- 
ruary 1 6th, 1 641. 

" The Houses passed a vote of thanks to the king, and forth- 
with proceeded in the work of reform, demanding, in succes- 
sive motions, the abolition of the Star Chamber, of the North 
Court, of the Ecclesiastical Court of High Commission, and 
of all extraordinary tribunals." 

Charles found that the dismissal of his previous Parliament 
was one of the most ill-judged actions of his life. In this 
Long Parliament the same men were brought together, all of 
them who possessed any influence or power ; but whereas they 



TO OLIVER CROMWELL, 

came first prepared to conciliate and deal with the king gen- 
erously and loyally, they came now prepared to trim down to 
the utmost all his prerogaHves, and to extend and assert to the 
utmost tire power of the people. It was the great battle-time 
of liberty and absolutism — the trial of monarchy and democ- 
racy. The king, beyond all question, pushed and urged his 
power to extremes, and so hurried the popular party on far be- 
yond their original intention and design. We have the famous 
" Remonstrance of the state of the kingdom," which after a 
debate, stormy beyond all precedent, was carried through the 
House by the small and httle satisfactory majority of nine; 
only this remonstrance was a direct elevation of the democratic 
over the aristocratic interests of the country. It was ordered 
to be printed and published, with the concurrence of the upper 
House, and was, in fact, an appeal to the people against the 
king. But this, which so many have deprecated as wickedly 
unloyal and traitorous, was called for by the conduct of the 
king, who, during his absence in Scotland, in the time of its 
preparation, was known to be attempting to curb the power of 
the Parliament by the raising of a northern army. 

The Grand Remoiistrance has been but little understood. 
Yet what more natural, v/hat more necessary, than the Remon- 
strance t It was the solemn call of the powerful spirits of the 
legislature to the king and to the nation :> ::onsider. The 
principles of the Remonstrance are now wc.l Vi-iown. It is a 
solemn catalogue of the evils and the tyranny beneath which 
the people groaned. Speaking of the taxes, Sir John Culpep- 
per, a Royalist, says, " The taxes, like the frogs of Egypt, 
have gotten possession of our dwellings, and we have scarcely 
a room free from them. They sip in our cup, they dip in our 
dish, they sit by our fire ; we find them in the dye vat, wash- 
ing bowl, and powdering box; they share with the butler in 
the pantry, they have marked us from head to foot, they will 
not bate us a pin." The sovereign was bent on every illegal 
means of raising money. Yet the long Parliament, after a 
very imperious speech from the king voted him five subsidies, 
;^35o,ooo. It was on enormous sum for those days. Surely 
such men deserved some confidence. But the king would not 
halt on his grasping and suicidal way. 

At this juncture the bishops precipitated matters by their 
unwise " Protestation," addressed, by twelve of their number, 
to the Upper House, a protestation which the peers them- 
selves, in a conference they held upon the matter, declared to 
contain " matters of dangerous consequence, extendmg to the 



« THE LORD OF THE FENS."" 71- 

deep entrenching upon the fundamental privileges and being 
of parliaments." As to the bishops themselves, the Commons 
accused them of high treason, and on the next day ten of them 
were sent to the Tower, the two others, in regard to their great 
age, being committed to the custody of the Black Rod. 

Rapidly now came on the tug of war. The king issued a 
declaration in reply to the Remonstrance. He sent the Attor- 
ney-General to the House of Lords to impeach one of the pop- 
ular members. Lord Kimbolton, together with Hampden, Pym, 
and three other members of the Lower House ; and, as if 
determined that no act of his should be wanting to justify the 
opposition of his enemies, he went next day to the House of 
Commons, attended by desperadoes — " soldiers of fortune " — 
armed with partisan, pistol, and sword, to seize the members 
denounced. This scene has been so often described that it 
were quite a work of supererogation to describe it again here. 
Let all be summed up in a word. Reconciliation between the 
king and the Parliament was now impossible. The privileges 
of the House had been violated in a manner in which no mon- 
arch had dared to violate them before, And, such a Parlia- 
ment 1 — men of the most distinguished courage and intelligence 
in the kingdom. The members he sought had escaped through 
the window. They fled in haste to the city. Thither the 
most distinguished members of the House followed them. 
They were protected by the Common Council from the king, 
who himself followed them to the* city, demanding their 
bodies ; but in vain. He was his own officer, both of military 
and police ; but as he went along, the growls of " Privilege, 
privilege — privilege of Parliament," greeted him everywhere. 
One of the crowd, bolder than the rest, approached his car- 
riage, shouting, "To your tents, O Israel!" The king had 
given the last drop to fill up the measure of contempt with 
which he was regarded. He had struggled with his Parlia- 
ment, and he was unsuccessful. Here was a hint for such men 
to act upon ; and petitions from all parts of the land poured 
in, from v^ast bodies of the people, declaring their intention to 
stand by the Parliament : from counties, cities, towns, 
parishes, trades ; the porters petitioned ; the waiermen {water- 
rats, Charles called them) petitioned. And we may gather the 
state of domestic confusion from the fact that the women peti- 
tioned. The mind of the country was roused against the mon- 
arch. Meantime the exiled members were brought back in 
triumph to the House, amid the pealing of martial music, flags 
waving from tlie mastheads of all the vessels on the river, the 



72 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

mast covered with shouting sailors, and the long procession of 
city barges — for at that day most great triumphal processions 
took place on the Thames ; and while the five members 
stepped into the House, the House rising to receive them, 
Charles fled to Hampton Court, nor did he see his palace at 
Whitehall again until he beheld it as a prisoner, and stepped 
from its banqueting-house to a scaffold. 

We have no idea, in these pages, of presenting to the reader 
a history of the times ; but in this running stream of incident 
he will be able to gather the description of the platform pre- 
paring for the deeds of Cromwell. Of course the House was 
emboldened by its triumph. It is no doubt judged that Charles, 
by his ignorance and his injudiciousness, had made himself 
unfit to guide the affairs of the nation, and the demands of 
the House were therefore now proportioned to their triumphs. 
They demanded the keeping of the Tower and all the principal 
fortresses of the kingdom. They demanded the choosing and 
control of the militia, the army and navy then being so called. 
And upon the king's refusal, the House conferred upon them- 
selves the powers they had desired. He issued a proclamation 
against them, which was in turn declared to be void in law. 
The king now left Hampton Court, proceeding toward York. 
He appeared before Hull, hoping by surprise to obtain posses- 
sion of a large quantity of military stores deposited there. 
Thus the king begun the work of insurrection. The Parlia- 
ment, in anticipation of the king's design, directed the several 
counties to array, train, and muster the people, as in cases of 
domestic insurrection. And the king retorted upon the Parlia- 
ment by issuing a proclamation for suppressing the rebellion ; 
and shortly after, coming to Nottingham, he there erected his 
standard August 25th, 1642, in the midst of a loud storm, 
which, as none failed to notice, blew it down the same even- 
ing. Thus he began the Civil War. Cromwell, at this time, 
was forty-three years of age. 

It is not clear that even yet Charles suspected the dangers 
his rashness so persistently invoked. The reader has, perhaps, 
heard how, once upon a time, a London exquisite descended 
into a coal mine on a voyage of exploration and discovery ; 
he saw everything — Davy lamps, blind horses, trucks of coal 
roUing along subterranean tramways. Seated on a cask 
to rest himself, he proceeded to question the swarthy miner, 
who was his conductor, concerning many things, and especially 
about the operation of blasting. " And whereabouts, my 
man," condescendingly said he, "whereabouts do you keep 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES: JOHN PYM. 73 

your powder ? " " Please, sir," replied the swart one, " you're 
a-sittin' on it ! " Charles was in a world to him all dark and 
subterranean, and sitting on a powder-mine, of the existence 
of which he had no knowledge, although it was beneath his 
throne. 



CHAPTER V. 

Cromwell's contemporaries : john pym. 

As in a great picture, while some central character stands 
in the foreground, and is evidently understood to be the tow- 
ering and commanding spirit around whom ultimately all the 
inferior characters revolve, yet nearer or more remote, more 
conspicuous, or more dimly seen, a number of persons take 
their place on the canvas ; so in the life of Cromwell there 
were precursors, heralds, men with whom he labored, men 
who passed away, and left him lonely, to meditate upon what 
they had done, and to take his own course as to what he 
must do. Lord Beaconsfield once said of Sir Robert Peel, 
that he was the greatest member of Parliament that ever 
lived. It was an amazing estimate, and in the memory of 
such men as Walpole, and the elder and the younger Pitt, not 
to mention more recent names, it must be regarded as an as- 
tonishing exaggeration ; but there was a man during the vexed 
years of which we are writing of whom this might most truly 
be said. John Pym is, probably, the name of the greatest 
member of Parliament that ever lived ; " King Pym " they 
called him in his own time, and indeed he looks, among the 
circumstances of his age, like the monarch of the scene. Like 
all of those men whom Charles managed to make his enemies, 
Pym was a gentleman, born of a good old family in Somer- 
setshire, in the year 1584 ; he studied at Oxford in Pembroke 
College, but like Hampden and Vane and Cromwell, he left 
his University without taking his degree. Milton was almost 
the only exception, he took his B.A. and his M.A. Pym was 
very early distinguished for his eloquence and knowledge of 
common law ; he soon took his seat in Parliament, serving in 
those held during the close of the reign of James L, and all 
those held in the reign of Charles I. It is true, that which 
has been so often -said, that no business was too large, and 
none too small, for him. As one after another the men ap- 



74 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

pear before our eyes with whom Charles \. arrayed himself 
in conflict, one can not but feel pity for the king : in every way 
he seems so small and they appear so great. Of them all, to 
some Pym has seemed the greatest ; and after his life of con- 
flict, " he was buried," says Lord Bulwer Lytton, " at West- 
minster, among the monuments of kings feebler and less des- 
potic than himself." It is said that he, too, in the earlier 
period of his career, was one of those who despaired of his 
country, and with Cromwell, Hampden, and others, desired 
to embark for America ; the tradition is, as our readers doubt- 
less know, that the ships in which they were about to sail 
were detained by order of Council. However this might be, 
it was Pym who at last, in the Long Parliament, attempted 
the great work of reformation ; and Lord Clarendon recites a 
conversation he had with Pym in Westminster Hall, appar- 
ently in the early days of the Long Parliament, in which Pym 
said, " They must now be of another temper tlian they were 
the last Parliament ; that they must not only sweep the House 
clean below, but must pull down all the cobwebs which hung 
in the top and corners, that they might not breed dust and so 
make a foul House hereafter ; that they now had an oppor- 
tunity to make their country happy by removing all griev- 
ances, and pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all 
men would do theii duties." 

This Parliament met; it was long, many years, since Parlia- 
ment had assembled last. What gaps Pym would notice in the 
lines of his early friends who had sat there when the House 
then assembled. The venerable Coke was dead ; Sir John 
Eliot had died in prison, a martyr to the cause of which they 
had both been champions ; Sir Thomas Wentworth, who had 
started in life with the same party, had fallen away — he was an 
apostate, he was now the Earl of Strafford, regarded as a 
fallen spirit, and as the deadliest, the most powerful and dan- 
gerous enemy of those who had been \h.2 friends of his youth. 
All these circumstances w^ould add, if anything were needed to 
add, intensity and vehemence to his convictions and his deter- 
minations. It W33 Pym who commenced in this Parliament, 
and rapidly pushed on, the discussion of the grievances ^'hich 
oppressed the country; and oa the yth of November, th= -^rst 
day on which the House attended to business, it was Pym who 
made a long and elaborate speech, classing the grievances 
under privilege of Parliament, Religion, and Liberty of the 
Subject. On the i itli he made '\ sutlden ::?.ction to the House 
with reference to that which had come to his knowledge of the 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES: JOHN PYM. 75 

imperious actions of Strafford both in England and in Ireland ; 
and while at this very moment a message came from the Lords 
concerning a treaty with the Scots, and desiring a meeting of 
a committee of both Houses that afternoon, it was at the in- 
stance of Pym a m.essage was returned to the Lords that the 
House had tal^en into consideration their message, but that 
they were in agitation upon weighty and important business, 
that they could not give them the meeting they desired on that 
afternoon, but they would shortly send an answer by messen- 
gers of their own. And messengers they shortly sent, Pym 
himself being the chief, who was chosen to carry up on that 
very day the impeachment of Strafford for high treason. Dr. 
Southey calls the impeachment and the death of Strafford one 
of the deadly sins of the Long Parliament. The question may 
be asked, then. Why was Strafford impeached ? Why did he 
suffer death? In one word, because he advised the king to 
resist his subjects, and to be so independent of and paramount 
over law, as to call in the aid of Irish forces, or any forces, to 
subdue his country : a dreadful counsel which, when we remem- 
ber, we can not but marvel at the apologists for its baseness. 
He, without doubt, advised the king that he was now absolved 
from all rule of government, and entitled to supply himself 
out of the estates of his subjects without their consent. Did 
space permit, we ought to devote a more lengthy episode to 
the life and career of Strafford ; he was a great man, but he 
was no match for Pym. As to the wisdom of his death, we 
shall forbear to express an opinion ; he might have been 
banished, but everywhere while he lived he must have been 
dangerous.* Upon all this we need only dwell for the purpose 
of poujng out how Pym was the animating spirit in those 
transact: ns :vhich brought about such tremendous results. 
It was alter (lis that the king, no doubt attempting the danger- 
ous work of reprisals and revenge, attempted to attach Pym 
and the other members for high treason. The attempt failed 
most miserably ; be:; it chould be remembered that when Pym 
commenced even hij mere aggressive career he was a moderate 
man. The king :]r^;cc,. 'hese men along, by his unwisdom and 
imprudence, on the co'..rjo they were compelled the take ; and 
thus Pym was rapidly ciiied along in a course of action far 
outstripping the theoretical opinions he professed to hold. 
He insisted originally on the sanctity of the Constitution, and 

♦Those who would prosecute these studies further, should read Dr. John 
Stoughton's volumes of the " History of the Church under the Civil Wars." They 
are delightful reading, but he sums up against the policy of Strafford's death. 



76 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

he labored to maintain it ; but, when circumstances are thrown 
into vehement agitation and strife, it becomes impossible to 
regulate action by that calm and quiet settlement of aifairs dic- 
tated either in the stillness of the study, or when events flow 
along imperturbed by the excitements and passions of great 
party strife. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE TRAINING OF THE IRONSIDES. 

But before this time Cromwell had foreseen the destinies of 
the contest, and from among the freeholders and their sons in 
his own neighborhood he formed his immortal troop of Iron- 
sides, those men who in many a well-fought field turned the 
tide of conflict, men who " jeopardized their lives on the high 
places of the field." These men were peculiarly molded ; 
their training was even more religious than military; they 
were men of position and character. Oliver preached to them, 
prayed with them, directed their vision to all the desperate and 
difficult embroilments of the times. These men were Puritans 
all ; independents ; men who, however painful it may be to 
our more Christian notions, used their Bible as a matchlock, 
and relieved their guard by revolving texts of Holy Writ, and 
refreshed their courage by draughts from God's Book. 

Oliver said, at a later time, he saw that all the cavaliers were 
a dissipated, godless race of men ; tjiere could be no hope for 
success but in religious and godly men. He allied the cause of 
Puritanism to such an enthusiasm, such a blaze of martial 
glory, that indeed they could be no other than irresistible. 
They grasped the sword of one Spirit, the Word of God ; they 
held communion with the skies, these men. What ! shall we 
compare Tancreds, and Ivanhoes, and Red Cross Knights with 
these realities, this band of Puritan Havelocks ? Not soldiers 
of a tournament were they ; in very deed fighting against 
" principalities, and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high 
places ; " theirs was a piety exasperated to enthusiasm, and 
blazing at last into warlike vehemence ! Then the Civil War 
was up in earnest, and Oliver soon found work. Since the last 
civil wars, the battles of the Roses, several generations had 
passed away, and England had grown in wealth and power ; 
but widely different were the interests represented by the two 



THE TRAINING OF THE IRONSIDES. 77 

contests to the mind ; this was the struggle, indeed, with the 
last faint life of feudalism. In some sort the contest of the 
city and the castle was represented even by the* Wars of the 
Roses ; but much more here, and hence over the whole land 
soon passed the echoes of strife. Old villages that had slept 
quietly for centuries beneath the shadow of the church spire or 
tower ; old halls, famous for the good cheer and merry songs 
of roistering Christmas time ; fields, spreading wide with the 
rich herbage, and green meadow-land — all these were dyed with 
blood. The river that had for ages crept lazily along through 
the woodland became choked with the bodies of the dead and 
crimsoned with the blood of the slain. Winding round many 
a graceful bend of the road, where nature had touched the 
scene with tenderness, the Roundhead, clad in iron, saw the 
waving plume of Cavalier. Soon the two straggling parties 
were locked in deadly conflict, and the spot became memora- 
ble for ages for the blood shed in a skirmish which could not 
be dignified by the name of a battle. Throughout the land 
family ties were severed ; everywhere " a man's foes were of 
his own household." " Old armor came down from a thou- 
sand old walls, and clanked upon the anvil of every village 
smithy ; " " boot and saddle ! " was the order of the day and 
night ; every buff coat, and every piece of steel that could 
turn, or deal a blow, became of value. Even the long-bow, 
the brown bill, and cross-bow, resumed their almost forgotten 
use ; rude spears, and common staves, and Danish clubs 
assumed the rank of weapons. The trumpets of the Cavaliers 
rang out fearlessly through the half of England, and thrilled 
the spirits of the people with the cries of loyalty ; responded 
to by the shrill blast of the Roundhead, and the cry of liberty. 
" Those," says Carlyle, " were the most confused months 
England ever saw ; " in every shire, in every parish, in court- 
houses, ale-houses, churches, and markets, wheresoever men 
were gathered together. England was, with sorrowful confu- 
sion in every fiber, tearing itself into hostile halves, to carry on 
the voting by pike and bullet henceforth. The spirit of war 
stalked forth ; many times we find the record of men who slew 
an enemy, and found a parent in the corpse they were about to 
spoil. The face of nature became changed, and peaceful 
homesteads and quiet villages assumed a rough, hostile look ; 
and the old familiar scene rang with the fatal, fascinating 
bugle-notes of war. Every house of strength became a for- 
tress, and every household a garrison. 

S.omance and poetry have woven gay garlands and sung 



78 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

highly wrought and glowing melodies around the achievements 
of knighthood and chivalry ; but romance and poetry shrink 
back startled and appalled before the deeds of the mighty 
Puritan heroes, the Ironsides of Cromwell, a race of Artegals, 
or Men in Iron. The carnal mind of the succeeding century 
has succeeded in defacing the features and soiling the fair fame 
of the knighthood of Puritanism ; but do you not think that 
the soldiers of the Cross may deserve words as eloquent, and 
song as soul-kindling, as those which echoed around the 
rabble rout of the strange Red Cross knights of Norman 
feudalism ? 

While all these events were passing, we can very well believe 
that the clear eye of Cromwell saw where it must all shortly 
terminate ; that, in fact, there was nothing for it but a battle- 
field ; and he was among the most prompt and decisive of ail 
the actors. His genius was too bold, too clear-sighted, to 
shine in the mazes of debate and the labyrinths of legal techni- 
cality. The battles against the king, with lawyers and verbal 
hair-splitters, were best fought by Pym and Hampden ; but 
outside, in the affairs cf the camp, and in that legislation that 
depends on a swift, clear eye and a strong, rapid arm — Crom- 
well was the man ! He distributed arms in the town of Cam- 
bridge, which he represented. He raised a troop of horse out 
of that county and Huntingdonshire ; and as soon as he re- 
ceived his commission as captain he began his career of con- 
quest. It is believed that here he struck the first severe blows 
at the Royal party ; for he seized the magazine of Cambridge 
for the use of Parliament ; and by stopping a quantity of plate 
on its way from the University to the king at York, he cut off 
the expected supplies. He utterly prevented the raising of a 
force for the king in the eastern counties, and arrested the 
High Sheriff of Hertfordshire at the very moment the latter 
was about to publish the proclamation of the king, declaring 
*' the Parliament commanders all traitors ! " The discipline of 
his troops, their bravery, and their sobriety have been the ad- 
miration of men ever since. 

It was about this time that the appellations of " Cavalier " 
and " Roundhead " came into general use to denote the op- 
posite parties. The former, it is well known, designated the 
king's friends ; and of the origin of the latter, Mrs. Hutchii> 
son gives the following account : 

*' When Puritanism grew into a faction, the zealots distin- 
guished themselves, both men and women, by several affections 
of habit, looks, and words, which, had it been a real declension 



THE TRAINING OF THE IRONSIDES. 79 

of vanity, and embracing of sobriety in all those things, had 
been most commendable in them. . . . 

" Among other affected habits, few of the Puritans, what 
degree soever they were of, wore their hair long enough to 
cover their ears ; and the ministers and many others cut it close 
round their heads, with so many little peaks, as was something 
ridiculous to behold. From this custom of wearing their hair, 
that name of * Roundhead ' became the scornful term given to 
the whole Parliament party ; whose army indeed marched out 
so, but as if they had been sent out only till their hair was 
grown. Two or three years afterward, however," she contin- 
ues (the custom, it may be presumed, having declined), " any 
stranger that had seen them would have inquired the reason 
of that name." 

Theise explanations have been introduced here because it has 
been usual to give the epithet " Roundhead " to Cromwell's 
soldiers on account of the shape of the helmet. Nothing can 
be more erroneous. The more usual term given to these sol- 
diers immediately beneath Cromwell's own command, was 
"Ironsides." It is very important to notice the training of 
these men, for they again and again turned the tide of battle. 
They were not ordinary men ; they were mostly freeholders, 
or freeholders' sons — men who thought as Cromwell thought, 
and over whom he had acquired an influence, from their resid- 
ing in his neighborhood. To all of them the Civil War was 
no light game ; it was a great reality ; it was a battle, not for 
carnal so much as spiritual things, and they went forth and 
fought therefor. 

Hence " I was," says Cromwell, " a person that, from my 
first employment, was suddenly preferred and lifted up from 
lesser trusts to greater, from my first being a captain of a troop 
of horse ; and I did labor (as well as I could) to discharge my 
trust, and God helped me as it pleased Him, and I did truly 
and plainly, and then in a way of foolish simplicity (as it was 
judged by very great and wise men, and good men, too) de- 
sire to make my instruments to help me in this work ; and I 
will deal plainly with you. I had a very worthy friend then, 
and he was a veiy noble person, and I know his memory is 
very grateful to all, Mr. John Hampden. At my first going 
out into this engagement, I saw their men were beaten at every 
hand ; I did indeed, and desired him that he would make 
some additions to my Lord Essex's army of some new regi- 
ments, and I told him I would be serviceable to him in bring- 
ing such men in as I thought had a spirit that would do some- 



8o OLIVER CROMWELL. 

thing in the work. This is very true that I tell you, God knows 
I lie not ; ' Your troops,' said I, ' are most of them old decayed, 
serving-men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows ; and,' 
said I, ' their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons, and 
persons of quality ; do you think that the spirits of such base 
and mean fellows will be ever able to encounter gentlemen, that 
have honor and courage and resolution in them ? ' Truly, I 
presented him in this manner conscientiously, and truly did I 
tell him, ' You must get men of spirit. And take it not ill 
what I say (I know you will not), of a spirit that is likely to 
go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be 
beaten still ; ' I told him so, I did truly. He was a wise and 
worthy person, and he did think that I talked a good notion, 
but an impracticable one ; truly I told him I could do some- 
what in it ; I did so ; and truly I must need say that to you 
(impart it to what you please), I raised such men as had the 
fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what they 
did, and from that day forward, I must say to you, they were 
never beaten, and wherever they engaged against the enemy, 
they beat continually." ^ 

How decisive a proof is this of Cromwell's genius, this 
enlisting the religious enthusiasm of the country on the side of 
the Parliament; thus fronting the idea of lofty birth with 
Divine ancestry — loyalty to the king, with loyalty to God — im- 
mense possessions, with heirship to a Divine inheritance — and 
obedience to the laws and prerogative of the monarch, with 
obedience to those truths unengrayen on the " tables of stone," 
but written by the Divine Spirit on " the fleshly table of the 
heart," in the heroism of discipline, and faith, and prayer. 

" As for Noll Cromwell," said the editor of a newspaper of 
the day (the then celebrated Marchmont Needham), with to the 
full as much truth as intended sarcasm, " he is gone forth in 
the might of his spirit, with all his train of disciples ; every one 
of whom is as David, a man of war and a prophet ; gifted men 
all, that resolve to do their work better than any of the sons of 
Levi." " At his first entrance into the wars," observes the 
Reliquice. Baxteriana, " being but captain of horse, he had 
especial care to get religious men in his troop ; these men 
were of greater understanding than common soldiers, and 
therefore were more apprehensive of the importance and conse- 
quences of the war. By this means, indeed, he sped better 
than he expected. Hereupon he got a commission to take 

* See '' Cromwell's Letters aod Speeches." 



THE TRAINING OF THE IRONSIDES. 8l 

some care of the associated counties ; where he brought his 
troop into a double regiment of fourteen full troops, and all 
these as full of religious men as he could get ; these, having 
more than ordinary wit and resolution, had more than ordinary 
success." 

But Cromwell himself has given to us the history of these 
immortal troops ; he tells us how he saw the Parliamen- 
tarians must have been beaten unless a better race of men could 
be raised — men who would match the high notions of chivalry 
and loyalty, and overreach them with a nobler and worthier 
feeling. Cromwell plainly saw that, even in battles, it is not 
brute force that masters, but invincible honor and integrity, 
and faith in the purity and truth of the cause. 

" But, not contenting himself with the mere possession of 
religion in his men, ' he used them daily to look after, feed, 
and dress their horses ; taught them to clean and keep their 
arms bright, and have them ready for service ; to choose the 
best armor, and arm themselves to the best advantage.' Upon 
fitting occasions, and in order to inure their bodies to the ser- 
vice of the field, he also made them sleep together upon the 
bare ground ; and one day, before they actually met the 
enemy, tried their courage by a stratagem. Leading them into 
a pretended ambuscade, he caused his seeming discovery of 
danger to be attended with all the ' noise, pomp, and circum- 
stance' of a surrounding foe. Terrified at which, about 
twenty of the troop turned their backs and fled ; and these he 
directly dismissed, desiring them, however, to leave their 
horses for such as would fight the Lord's battles in their stead. 
Thus trained, when the contest really ensued, Cromwell's 
horse ' excelled all their fellow-soldiers in feats of war, and 
obtained more victories over the enemy.' And if they excelled 
them in co-urage, so did they also in civility, order, and disci- 
pline. The court journal, indeed, the Merciirius Aulicus^ 
charged liiem with many cruelties and excesses, of whifch every 
circumstance proves ^he maliciousness and falsehood. For, 
while a very large number of the king's party, in sober trut"h, 
gave themselves up to every species of debauchery in their own 
persons, and to all manner of spoliation of the peaceable inhab- 
itants, of whom they speedily became the terror and detesta- 
tion, another contemporary print justly said of Cromwell's sol- 
diers, ' No man swears, but he pays his twelve-pence ; if he be 
drunk, he is set in the stocks, or worse ; if one calls the other 
Roundhead, he is cashiered; insomuch, that the counties 
where they come leap for joy of them, and come in and join 
6 



83 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

them. How happy were it if all the forces were thus disci- 

plined.'" 

Nor will the reader fail to notice the practical eye, the 
fiery sincerity of this man. 

" He told them," says Forster, ** that he would not seek to 
perplex them (since other officers, he had heard, instructed 
their troops in the nice legal fictions of their civil superiors in 
Parliament) with such and such phrases as fighting for kiftg 
and Farliainent ; it was for the Parliament alone they were 
now marching into military service ; for himself, he declared 
that if he met King Charles in the body of the enemy, he 
would as soon discharge his pistol upon him as upon any 
private man ; and for any soldier present, therefore, who was 
troubled with a conscience that might not let him do the like, 
he advised him to quit the service he was engaged in. A 
terrible shout of determined zeal announced no deserter on 
that score, and on marched Cromwell and his Ironsides — 
then the seed, and soon after the flower, of that astonishing 
army, which even Lord Clarendon could describe as ' one to 
which victory was entailed, and which, humbly speaking, 
could hardly fail of conquest whithersoever led — an army 
whose order and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, 
whose courage and success, made it famous and terrible all 
over the vv'orld." 

Can our readers conceive these men ? The writer is \^rj 
desirous that they should do so ; for they were the genius of 
the army. Let them be compared with Rupert and his sol- 
diers. Prince Rupert, called also "Prince Robber" — called 
also " The Son of Plunder." We shall dwell at length upon 
this chief captain of Charles's army presently. These patro- 
nymics suggest very different reflections from those in which 
we have just indulged in reference to the Ironsides. Where- 
ever the Cavaliers went, they were a scourge and a curse. 
In Gloucester, in Wilts, what histories have we of them and 
their depredations. They were, for the most part apparently, 
an undisciplined rabble, without bravery or determination, if 
we except their officers ; and we shall see, from the course of 
the history, that Rupert was a madcap prince, and his impru- 
dence the worst enemy Charles had, next to his own. 

There is nothing more remarkable, in the course of this 
civil war, than the fact that men who had just come from the 
market and plow, should meet the Cavaliers on their own 
ground and defeat them. The Royalists prided themselves 
on their military character; war was their trade and their 



THE TRAINING OF THE IRONSIDES, 83 

boast; swordsmen, they professed to be skilled in all the 
discipline and practice of the field. It was their ancestral 
character , it was the crest and crown of their feudalism, and, 
defeated in war, they had nothing further to boast of. How 
was it ? The history we have given in some degree explains 
it; but the principal reason, after all, is found in the higher 
faith. Look at the watchwords of the two armies as they 
rushed on to conflict : " Truth and Peace ! '*' " God is with 
us ! " *• The Lord of Hosts ! " such mottoes contrast favor- 
ably with " The King and Queen Mary 1 " " Hey ! for 
Cavaliers ! " or even that of " The Covenant ! " These men 
charged in battle as if beneath the eye of God , to them it 
was no play but business ; they knew that they rushed on, 
many of them, to their death, but they heeded not, for their 
spirit's eye caught visions of waiting chariots of fire, and 
horses of fire, hovering round the field ; and they advanced 
to the conflict, mingling with the roar of musketry, and the 
clash of steel the sound of psalms and spiritual songs. 

How little have these men been known. The novelist has 
delighted in decorating the tombs of their antagonists, but 
has cared little for them. Romance has spread its canvas, 
and Poetry her colors, to celebrate the deeds of Rupert and 
his merry men. Has it been ignorance 1 or that disposition 
of the human spirit which refuses to see the lofty piety and 
determined heroism of a religious soul ? Looked at from that 
point of view from which most men would regard them, the 
Puritans, and the soldiers who fought the battles for them, 
must seem to be fanatics ; for they believed steadily in another 
world, and lived and fought perpetually as beneath its influ- 
ence. Of course every one individually was not such an one ; 
but we judge of things by wholes — " by their fruit ye shall 
know them." What was their general character? If is not 
wonderful that we detect in them some exaggeration — a lofty 
spiritual pride, inflation of speech, hardness, insensibility to 
human passion. The school in which they were trained was 
a very severe one ; their rules were binding by a most impres- 
sive authority. Let the man who would judge them, look at 
them not from the dehneations of Sir Walter Scott, or James, 
but from the period in which they lived, from the circum- 
stances by which their characters were fashioned and made, 
and to the men to whom they looked as leaders ; or let him 
take the chronicles of the time, and he will be at no loss to 
spell out the glory of their name, " their enemies themselves 
being judges." We have already said romance has had it all 



84 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

its owTi way in depicting the Royalist and the Cavalier ; to 
them have been given all the glow of the novelist, all the 
charm of the poet. We are just now beginning to do justice 
to the usages and manners of Puritan households, with which 
sweetness and Romance, domestic tenderness and grace have 
been supposed to be incompatible ; yet Puritan womanhood is 
one of the fairest of types, and far loveUer to the true artist's 
eye than any of the luscious lips and dainty love-locks which 
shed their meretricious charms over the canvases of Sir Peter 
Lely. We Uke to imagine those old country houses, the 
manors and mansions, up and down whose staircases of pol- 
ished oak, Puritan wives and maidens were handed by wealthy 
husbands and ambitious lovers. It is singular to realize the 
regular family worship there ; the presence of superstitious 
belief when men and women believed themselves to be nearer 
to a universe of invisible and mysterious influences than they 
do now ; and stories and traditions of witchcraft and appari- 
tions haunted the houses. The houses of those times were 
certainly romantic, and tenanted by a noteworthy race, even 
though, stepping from the household into the church, our sen- 
timents are somewhat shocked by the undecorated service the 
Puritans loved to follow ; and its chancels and aisles present- 
ing the staid and unornamented appearance of those we know 
in Geneva, or Zurich, or Berne, only that no choir or organ 
was permitted to aid the song. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CROMWELL'S CONTEMPORA"RTES : JOHN HAMPDEN. 

Among the great names, shining with a very conspicuous 
luster during this period of civil conflict, perhaps no name has 
commanded since a more universal interest, and even homage, 
than that of Cromwell's cousin, John Hampden. He was the 
representative of an ancient and highly honorable county 
family in Buckinghamshire ; for centuries they had taken their 
name from their habitation. Great Hampden, in that county. 
William Hampden married the aunt of the Protector, Crom- 
well ; he was the father of the patriot. The history of this 
Elizabeth Cromwell was a singular one : her husband died in 
the year 1597, she continued a widow until her death, sixty- 
seven years after, and she was buried in Great Hampden 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES: JOHN HAMPDEN. 85 

Church, 1664-5, having lived. to the great age of ninety. It 
is surely affecting to think of the singular revolutions through 
which this lady passed ; her years extended through the reigns 
of six sovereigns. She saw the great line of the Tudors expire, 
with her royal namesake Elizabeth ; she saw the British scepter 
united with that of the Scottish beneath James I., she saw the 
trembling scepter in the hand of Charles I., and beheld it 
wrested by the people from that weak and impolitic hand ; she 
saw those men who had overawed the king, and conducted him 
to the scaffold, compelled to bow before, and see their sover- 
eignty shivered to pieces in the presence of her mighty 
nephew as he ascended the Protector's throne ; she saw his 
power bequeathed to his incapable son^ her great-nephew, 
Richard ; and she beheld him driven into private life by the 
men of " the Rump " of the Long Parliament, whom her illus- 
trious nephew had packed about their business ; she saw those 
very men who had been so ignominiously deposed, those self- 
restored republicans, revive the monarchy by the restoration 
of Charles II. to the throne, so inaugurating the most disgrace- 
ful and shameful reign which desecrates the annals of our 
country's history. 

What an affecting succession of national vicissitudes ! She 
had two sons : Richard was the youngest, he survived his 
brother, dying in 1659. He appears to have been of the same 
patriotic faith and practice, but probably a comparatively 
weak man ; he was one of the Council of Richard Cromwell. 
I'he Hampden was John. This youth received the natural 
training of an English gentleman of those days at a school in 
Thame. In 1609 he entered as a commoner at Magdalen 
College, Oxford, where certainly his attainments must have 
obtained for him some reputation- ; for it is a remarkable fact 
that he was chosen by Laud apparently, then master of St. 
John's, to write the gratulations of Oxford upon the marriage 
of the Elector Palatine with the Princess Elizabeth, the mar- 
riage which gave birth to Prince Rupert, who had the troops at 
Chalgrove Field, on which Hampden was slain ! Hampden 
married in 1619, and his marriage seems to have been singu- 
larly happy ; but he did not retain his wife long. He first 
represented the old borough of Grampound, in the eighteenth 
year of the reign of King James I. ; then he represented the 
Wendover, in the two Parliaments in the first and third years 
of the reign of Charles I. ; but in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
years of the same reign he sat for the county of Buckingham- 
shire, His family was so eminent — it traced itself in unbroken 



t$ OLIVER CROMWELL. 

line from the earliest Saxon times, and derived even its name 
and possessions from Edward the Confessor — that it is not 
singular that his mother was very desirous that he should in- 
crease the family dignity by attaining to that to which it 
would have been easy to attain, the peerage. This was before 
the great troubles set in. Hampden seems to have had no 
ambition of this kind, and saw clearly that the sphere in which 
he could most effectively serve his country was the House of 
Commons ; and, in his rank as a country gentleman, he was 
perhaps equal in the several particulars of wealth, lineage, 
and intelligence to any commoner there. To the impressions 
of the present writer the character of Hampden seems to 
shine out with singular clearness, but many writers have af- 
fected to charge him with the indulgence of ambitious rather 
than patriotic motives in the great struggle. This arises from 
the fact of the deep secretiveness of his character, a charac- 
teristic in which he was perhaps the equal of his mighty cousin, 
and, indeed, had he been preserved to the close of the war, 
the course of events after might have been different. He had 
far more practical sagacity, a far profounder knowledge of 
what the nation needed, than either Sir Henry Vane, Algernon 
Sidney, or Bradshaw. He was not an extreme man ; he was 
probably, no more than Cromwell, a dreaming, theoretical 
republican. He desired to save the kingdom from the doom 
of intolerant and arbitrary government in Church and State ; 
and as an upright member of Parliament, he threw himself at 
once into the struggle. He may be almost spoken of as cer- 
tainly one of the very first who stood forward, with resolution 
and courage, as the champion of liberty, defying the sover- 
eign in law, and denying his right to levy ship-money. He 
stood in the pathway of exorbitant power; he refused to pay 
a tax — trifling to him — because it was levied by the king with- 
out the consent of Parliament. He appealed to the laws, and 
he brought the question to a trial. 

The Long Parliament has been called the fatal Parliament. 
It protected itself at once against dissohition by resolving that 
it would only be dissolved by its own act; for it had been 
abundantly proved that " with Charles no Parliament could be 
safe, much less useful to the country, that did not begin by 
taking the whole power of government into its own hands." * 
To this Parliament Hampden's was a double return, for Wen- 
dover and for his own county of Buckinghamshire. He elect. 

* Lord Nugenfs " Life of John Hampden.'* 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES : JOHN HAMPDEN. 87 

ed to sit for the latter ; and it soon became very clear that 
this Parliament represented the indignation of a whole people 
thoroughly determined to redress long existing and grievous 
wrongs. We have sufficiently referred to this in preceding 
pages. Hampden was not a fierce or a fiery spirit ; indeed, 
both Hampden himself and the men by whom he was sur- 
rounded were characters not very easily read. Charles was 
as unequal to a conflict with them as a child. They had to 
deal with a man, the son of one who esteemed himself to be a 
specially adroit master in dissimulation, and who had certainly 
left to his son, as a legacy, his lessons and experiences in king- 
craft. We have seen that with Charles it was impossible to 
be clear or true ; dissimulation was the weapon by which he 
had sought to circumvent the tactics of the great leaders. 
They were compelled to use the same weapons, and they van- 
quished him. Hume, speaking of Hampden and Sir Harry 
Vane, and including, of course, Cromwell, says, " Their di% 
course was polluted with mysterious jargon, and full of the 
lowest and most vulgar hypocrisy." The hypocrisy which 
Hume charges on Hampden and his fellow-workers amounts 
to no more than that they were men thoroughly deterniined 
not to be circumvented, and to knock away the entire scaffold- 
ing which v/:'nt to the support of arbitrary and illegal power ; 
and they iliastrated this at once, in resolving on the indissolu- 
bility of their own Parliament, and the impeachment which 
led to the rl -ath of Strafford. Inevitably the sword was un- 
sheathed in the nation. May, in his " History of the Long 
Parliament," says, ''The fire when once kindled cast forth, 
through every corner of the land, not only sparks but devour- 
ing flames ; insomuch that the kingdom of England was 
divided into more seats of war than counties, nor had she 
more fields than skirmishes, nor cities than sieges ; and 
almost all the palaces of lords, and other great houses, were 
turned everywhere into garrisons of war. Throughout Eng- 
land sad spectacles were seen of plundering and firing vil- 
lages ; and the fields, otherwise waste and desolate, were rich 
only, and terribly glorious, in camps and armies." 

Now comes a third great period of Hampden's life; for his 
life consists of three stages. First, when his mind was matur- 
ing its wishes and intentions, when he felt the dishonor and 
the distress of the country so much that it is said he meditated 
with Cromwell embarking for America ; then cam.e the second 
period, when he stood forth the bold and earnest counselor, 
attempting to avert by his wisdom the overt acts of despotism 



88 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

on the one side, and the possibility of rebellion, so called, on 
the other ; then came the third period, when, under the woody 
brows of the Chiltern Hills, he sought to marshal the militia 
of his native county. With prodigious activity, unceasingly 
he labored, and sought to form the union of the six associated 
midland counties. As might be expected from his character, 
he was mighty in organization, and he deserves the principal 
honor, perhaps, of having brought all those counties to act as 
one compacted machine. He gathered all his green-coats 
together, and formed them into a company which told with 
immense effect on the issues of the war. But he was one of 
the first who fell. It was on Sunday morning, the i8th of 
June, 1643, being in the second year of the war, he received 
a mortal wound in a skirmish on Chalgrove Field. It was 
near to the scenery of his school-boy life, Thame. It is a 
tradition that he was seen first moving in the direction of his 
father-in-law's house at Pyrton. Thither he was wont to go, 
when a youth, courting his first wife, whom he had very ten- 
derly loved ; from that house he had married her. It was 
thought that thither he would, had it been possible, have gone 
to die. But Rupert's cavalry were covering the plain between, 
so he rode back across the grounds of Hazeley, on his way to 
Thame. He paused at the brook which divides the parishes ; 
he was afraid to dismount, as he felt the impossibility of 
remounting if he alighted. He summoned a momentary 
strength, cleared the leap ; he was over, reaching Thame in 
great pain, and almost fainting. He found shelter in the 
house of one Ezekiel Brown, and six days after, having 
suffered cruelly, almost without intermission, he died ; but 
during those days he wrote, or dictated, letters of advice to 
the Parliament, whose affairs had not, as yet, reached that 
state of prosperity which they presently attained. Then, like 
the religious man he was, he disposed himself solemnly for 
death ; he received the Lord's Supper shortly before he died ; 
he avowed his dislike, indeed, to the government of the 
Church of England — that of course — but his faith in her 
great doctrines ; he died murmuring in prayer. " Lord 
Jesus ! " he exclaimed in the last agony, " receive my soul ! 

O Lord, save my country ! O Lord, be merciful to ," but 

the prayer was unfinished, in that second the noble spirit 
passed away. Of course he was buried in his own parish 
church of Great Hampden ; there his dust lies in the chancel. 
His soldiers followed their great leader to the grave bare- 
headed, with reversed arms and muffled drums; as they 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES: JOHN HAMPDEN. 89 

marched they sung the nineteenth Psalm, "that lofty and 
melancholy Psalm," says Lord Macaulay, " in which the fra- 
gility of human life is contrasted with the immutability of Him 
to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is 
passed, or as a watch in the night." The great storm of war 
which rolled over the country had removed Hampden from 
his old house, and all the scenes of his early felicity. He 
never resided in Buckinghamshire after his second marri-age ; 
his Parliamentary duties compelled a residence in London, 
and he chose what was then the charming suburban retreat 
of Gray's Inn Lane. But the mansion, the ancestral home of 
his early days, still stands. From its seclusion, it is little 
known ; but it stands upon a spot of singular beauty, from 
whence it commands a view of several counties. It reposes 
among green glades, and is inclosed within the shadowy still- 
ness of old woods of box, juniper, and beech lining the ave- 
nues which lead to the old house of manifold architectures, 
blending the ancient Norman with the style of the Tudor, 
and mingling with these the innovations of later periods. It 
has been thought that the purity of Hampden's character 
might be seen in the fact that a spirit so quiet and so unam. 
bitious could forsake the stillness of so holy and beautiful a 
retreat, to mingle his voice amid the crafts and collisions of 
Parliament, or the wild shock of warfare. The story of Hamp- 
den's life insensibly draws us to Samuel Rogers' charming 
picture of the patriot in " Human Life," and by Hampden's 
tomb we may well recur to the lines : 

" Then was the drama ended. Not till then, 
So full of chance and change the lives of men, 
Could we pronounce him happy. Then secure 
From pain, from grief, and all that we endure, 
He slept in peace — say, rather, soared to Heaven, 
Upborne from earth by Him to whom 'tis given 
In His right hand to hold the golden key 
That opes the portals of Eternity. 
"When by a good man's grave I muse alone, 
Methinks an angel sits upon the stone, 
And, with a voice inspiring joy not fear, 
Says, pointing upward, ' Know, he is not here ! ' " * 

* It almost shocks the sensibilities, even of not very sensitive persons, to know 
that from mere motives of curiosity the body of the great patriot was, many years 
since, exhumed. Hampden's body was dragged from its dread abode, apparently 
for no other reason than to settle the cause of his death, which by many persons 
had been assigned to the bursting of his own pistol ; the pistol had been a present to 
him from Sir Robert Pye, his son-in-law, and tradition had said that when Sir Rob- 
ert visited his father-in-law, in his last illness, Hampden said to him, *' Ah ! Robin, 
your unhappy present has been my ruin ! " It is certain that he met his death on 
the field as a brave man might, in the performance of his duty and it certainly 



90 OLIVER CROMWELL. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CROMWELL : THE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR. 

It was on the field of Marston that the militar\^ genius of 
Cromwell first shone conspicuously. Marston Moor, seven 
miles from York. How came that battle to be fouR;ht at all ? 
The old city of York is a venerable city ; crowned with its 
tiara of proud towers, she stands, like an old queen, on the 
banks of the Ouse. And she has witnessed memorable things 
in the course of her history — for she has a defined history 
approaching two thousand years — but not one more memora- 
ble than that great fight in which, for the first time, the 
genius of Cromwell rose triumphant and complete upon the 
field. York, the old city, was in possession of ihe Royalists , 
and so weak were they, that it seemed the Roundheads, who 
lay encamped before the city, must soon find an entrance 
there. But just then the fiery Rupert came plunging across 
the Lancashire hills, after his cruel massacre at Bolton. He 
had with him 20,000 of the flower of the Royalist and Cavalier 
army; and the Puritan forces drew out from York to Marston 
Moor. Had Rupert contented himself with relieving and 
succoring York, the whole tide of conflict might have been 
different ; but he did not know the strength of his foes. 
Charles, indeed, had written to him, " If York be lost, I shall 
esteem my crown to be little less [than lost]." There, out- 
side of the city, lay the Royalist army — lay the protecting 
host of Rupert ; and there, yonder, along the moor, the 
armies of the Parliament. It was a calm summer evening, 
on the second of Jiily, 1644. ^^ can scarcely even now 
think that Rupert, in all his thoughtlessness, could have 
wished to hazard a battle when the advantages, so decidedly 

seems an idle and very insig-nificant reason, for the settlement of such a question, 
to have vexed and disturbed the repose of the sacred and venerable dead. How- 
ever, it was done, and a copioiis account of the disentombment was inserted in the 
Geniiemans Mag-azine ior A.ng\i&\^ 1828. It was Loid Nug^ent who conducted the 
examination, and l-e removed and unrolled the shroud from his venerable ancestor. 
The coffin was lifted from the vault and placed on tressels in the center of the 
church. The examination does not appear to have resulted in any very distinctly 
satisfactory el j^Id^ .ons ; but those who are interested in such matters mav find a 
ghastly .'pov^ar i.-Cf of the patriot after hts '.ong sepulture, if they turn back to the 
vokm- vi Wi-.:x we have already given a reference. The author of the present 
•work may be permitted to express his amazement that hands professing to be moved 
by reverence could engage in such an unseemly and self-imposed task. 



THE BA TTLE OF MARSTON MOOR 91 

his own, could only have been jeoparded and risked by con- 
flict ; and yet, let us recollect that the letter of Charles to 
him was carried by him on his heart, to the day of his death, 
as liis warrant that well-fought, fatal field ; and ao v\'e have 
said, he did not know the sLrength of that army cf yeomen 
and volunteers ; above all, he did not know Cromwell. The 
evening of the day closed in glocm, the heavens wer-e covered 
with clouds, thick, black, murky masses swept over the sky. 
Hymns of triumph rose from the ranks of the Roundheads 
and the Parliament, while Prince Rupert would have a ser- 
mon preached before him and the army ; and his chaplain 
took a text, which seemed to challenge the issue of the mor- 
row, from Joshua : " The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of 
gods. He knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be rebel- 
lion, or in transgression against the Lord, save us not this 
day." Still, dark and gloomy, and more gloomy fell the eve- 
ning; thunder muttered along the heavens, and the torked 
flame glanced on the mighty mass of iron-clad men. Between 
the two armies lay a drain. On the opposite bank to the 
Royalist forces, in the center, stood Leven and Fairfax, the 
commanders of the Parliament ; on the left yonder, Cromwell 
and his Ironsides. Rupert had, with wild, furious, character- 
istic energy, fallen upon the center, and his life-guards had 
scattered and routed them, so that amid the storm of shot, 
the maddening shouts, the thundering hoof, pursuing and 
pursued, they swept across yonder field, cutting down remorse- 
lessly all, scattering the whole iiost like leaves before the 
storm-wind. Goring, the other P oyalist general, v is not idle ; 
his desperadoes charged on, and with wild tumultuous rout 
they hewed down the fugitives by scores. Two thirds of the 
field were gained for Rupert and for Charles. Lord Fair- 
fax was defeated. He fled through the field, through the 
hosts of the Cavaliers, who supposed him to be some Royal- 
ist general ; he posted on to Cawood Castle, arrived there, 
and in the ahnost or entirely deserted house he unbooted and 
unsaddled himself, and went like a wise old soldier to bed. 
But amid all that rout, the carnage, and flying confusion, one 
man held back his troops. Cromwell, there to the left, when 
he saw how the whole Royalist force attacked the center, 
restrained the fiery impatience of his Ironsides ; he drew them 
off still further to the left ; his eye blazed all on fire, till the 
moment he uttered his short, sharp passionate word to the 
troops, " Charge, in the name of the Most High ! " Beneath 
the clouds, beneath the storm, beneath the night heavens 



92 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

flying along, he scattered the whole mass. We know It was 
wondrous to see him in those moods of highly-wrought enthu- 
siasm ; and his watchword always struck along the ranks. 
" Truth and Peace ! " he thundered along the lines ; " Truth 
and Peace ! " in answer to the Royalist cries of " God and 
the King ! " " Upon them — upon them ! " That hitherto 
almost unknown man, and his immortal hosts of Puritans, 
poured upon the Cavaliers. The air was alive wdth artillery. 
Cromwell seized the very guns of the Royalists, and turned 
them upon themselves. Thus, when the Royalists returned 
from the scattering the one wing of their foes, they found the 
ground occupied by victors. The fight was fought again, but 
fought in vain ; in vain was Rupert's rallying cry, " For God 
and for the King ! " Through the black and stormy night 
was seen the gleaming steel of other hostile lines. The Cav- 
aliers were scattered far and wide over the plain — over the 
country ; while amid the fire, thousands of the dead lying 
there, and the shattered carriages, Rupert made the last 
effort of flying from the field to York ; across the bean-field, 
over the heath, the agonized young fiery-heart made his way. 
And there, amid the gathering silence, and amid the groans 
of the dying, rises the magnificent military genius of Crom- 
well ! 

Marston Moor was the first most decided collision of the 
hostile armies. We have given in a few touches a concise 
and succinct account of this great and momentous conflict ; 
but, even in so brief a life of Cromwell as the present, it 
ought not to be so hastily dismissed. A graphic pencil 
might employ itself in a description of the fine old city, be- 
sieged for three months, where provisions were growing 
scarce, and in whose beautiful minster that day — it was a 
Sabbath-day — affecting accents had given tender pathos to 
the liturgies imploring aid from Heaven. It would be no 
difficult task to realize and describe the streets of the ancient 
and magnificent city as they were on that day, and if Rupert 
had been wise, it seems as if the city might have been re- 
lieved and Cromwell's great opportunity lost; but the two 
vast ironclad masses lay out beyond there — nearly fifty 
thousand men, all natives of the same soil — stretching away 
almost to Tadcaster — skirting Bramham Moor, upon which, 
ages before Mother Shipton had prophesied that a great 
battle would be fought — a prophecy which, in this instance, 
received very creditable approximation to fulfillment. It 
was, as we have said, on the 2d of July, 1644. The day wore 



THE BATTLE OF MARS TON MOOR. 93 

on while successive movements and counter movements took 
place. Scarcely a shot had been fired. When both armies 
were completely drawn up, it was after five in the evening, 
and nearly another hour and a half passed with little more 
than a few cannon shots. The lazy and nonchalant New- 
castle considered all was over for that day, and had retired 
to his carriage, to prepare himself by rest for whatever might 
betide on the morrow. Even Rupert and Cromwell are be- 
lieved to have expected that their armies would pass the 
night on the field. It was a bright summer evenmg, closing 
apparently in storm ; there was light enough still for the 
work of destruction to proceed, and that mighty host — 46,000 
men, children of one race, subjects of one king — to mingle 
in bloody strife, and lay thousands at rest, " to sleep the 
sleep that knows no waking," on that fatal night in July, on 
Long Marston Moor. It has been surmised, with consid- 
erable probability, that a stray cannon shot, which proved 
fatal to young Walton, Oliver Cromwell's nephew, by rousing 
in him every slumbering feeling of wrath 'and indignation, 
mainly contributed to bring on the general engagement. 
Certain it is that he was the first to arrange his men for de- 
cisive attack. We suppose it was during the period of 
inaction, in the evening that Prince Rupert examined a stray 
prisoner whom his party had taken, as to who were the 
leaders of the opposing army,- the man answered, " General 
Leven, Lord Fairfax, and Sir Thomas Fairfax." " Is Crom- 
well there ? " exclaimed the Prince, interrupting him ; and 
being answered that he was, " Will they fight ? " said he ; 
" if they will, they shall have fighting enough.'* Then the pris- 
oner was released, and going back to his own army told the 
generals what had passed, and Cromwell that the Prince had 
asked for him in particular, and had said, " They should 
have fighting enough."" " And," exclaimed Cromwell, " if it 
please God, so they shall ! " 

It was, then, within a quarter to seven on that evening of 
July, when the vast army, that spread along the wide area of 
Marston Moor, began to be stirred by rapid movements to the 
front. Along a considerable part of the ground that lay imme- 
diately between the advanced posts of the Parliamentary 
forces, there ran a broad and deep ditch, which served to pro- 
tect either party from sudden surprise. Toward this, it has 
been said by some that a body of Cromwell's cavalry was 
seen to move rapidly from the rear, followed by a part of the 
infantry. Prince Rupert met this promptly by bringing up a 



94 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

body of musketeers, who opened on ihem a murderous fire as 
they formed in front of the ditch which protected Rupert's 
musketeers from the cavalry, while a range of batteries advary- 
tageously planted on a height to the rear kept up an incessant 
cannonading on the whole line. 

It was the first meeting of Cromwell and Rupert. And on 
Cromwell, as we have seen, descends the glory of the victory. 
His eye detected the movements in the Royalist army. He 
and his Ironsides (first named Ironsides on this famous field) 
broke the cavalry of General Goring. The Scots, indeed, had 
been defeated by Rupert early in the battle. He poured 
upon them a torrent of irresistible fire. But while he was 
confident that the field was won, the Ironsides again poured 
over Rupert's own cavalry, and swept them from the field. 

The victory was complete, the Royalist army was entirely 
broken and dispersed ; fifteen hundred of their number re- 
mained prisoners. The whole of their arms and artillery, 
their tents, baggage and military chest remained the spoils 
of the victors. Prince Rupert's own standard, and more 
than a hundred others, had fallen into their hands ; and 
York, which Rupert had entered only three days before 
in defiance of their arms, now lay at their mercy. A 
strange and fearful scene spread out beneath the sky on that 
summer, now dark with midnight storm, on Long Marston 
Moor. Five thousand men lay dead or dying there ; born of 
the same lineage, and subjects of one king, who had yet fallen 
by one another's hands. It was the bloodiest battle of the 
whole war, and irretrievably ruined the king's hopes in the 
north. 

Long after midnight, Rupert and Newcastle re-entered 
York. They exchanged messages without meeting, Rupert 
intimating his intention of departing southward on the fol- 
lowing morning with as many of the horse and foot as he had 
kept together : and Newcastle returning word that he in- 
tended immediately to go to the sea-side, and embark for the 
Continent — a desertion rendered justifiable when we re- 
member that his advice had been contemptuously slighted, 
and his command superseded by the rash nephew of Charles, 
acting under the king's orders. Each kept his word, and in a 
fortnight thereafter York was in possession of their oppo- 
nents. 

Many representatives of noble houses lay stretched stark 
and cold on the dreadful field. The eminent Roman Catholic 
family of Townley, of Burnley, in Lancashire, have a tradition 



THE BA TTLE OF MARSTON MOOR. 95 

of the cla5\ Man', daughter of Sir Francis Trapper, had mar- 
ried Charles Townley : he was one of those killed in this bat- 
tle. During the engagement, his wife was with her father at 
Knaresborough ; there she heard of her husband's fate, and 
came upon the field the next morning to search for his body, 
while the attendants of the camp were stripping and burying 
the dead. Here she was accosted by a general officer, to 
whom she told her melancholy story ; he heard her with great 
tenderness, but he earnestly implored her to leave the scene 
not only so distressing to witness, but where she might also 
herself be insulted. She complied, and he called for a 
trooper, mounted her on horseback in the trooper's company, 
and sent her back in safety to Knaresborough. Inquiring of 
the trooper, on the w^ay, the name of the officer to whom she 
had been indebted, slie learned that it was Cromwell ! This 
story is preserved in the archives of the Townley family. She 
survived, a widow, unlil 1690; died at Townley, and was 
buried at Burnley at the age of ninety-one. 

And here is a letter from Ciomwell, full of tenderness. 
The strong man could weep with those who wept. And you 
notice, although he had turned on that field the fortunes of 
England, he makes no mention of himself, nor any mention 
of a severe wound he had received in the neck. D'Aubign^ 
says it bears indubitable marks of a soldier's bluntness, but 
also of the sympathy of a child of God. In Oliver these two 
elements were never far apart. It was addressed to his 
brother-in-law. Colonel Valentine Walton, the husband of his 
younger sister Margaret, and contained the account of the 
victory, and of his own son's being among the slain, the same 
whose fate, it is thought, by rousing Oliver to the charging 
point, brought on the general engagement. 

"5th July, 1644. 

" Dear Sir, — It's our duty to S3nnpathize in all mercies, 
and to praise the Lord together in all chastisements or trials, 
so that we may sorrow together. 

" Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great 
favor from the Lord, in this great victory given unto us, such 
as the like never was since this war began. . It had all the 
evidence of an absolute victory, obtained, by the Lord's 
blessing, upon the godless party principally. We never 
charged but we routed the enemy. The left wing, which I 
commanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our 



96 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

rear, beat all the prince's horse. God made them as stubble 
to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our 
horse, and routed all we charged. The particulars I can not 
relate now ; but I believe, of twenty thousand, the prince 
hath not four thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to God. 

" Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon 
shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut 
off, whereof he died. 

" Sir, you know my own trials this way ; but the Lord sup- 
ported me in this — that the Lord took him * into the happiness 
we all pant for, and live for. There is your precious child 
full of glory, never to know sin or sorrow any more. He 
was a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious. God give 
you His comfort. Before his death he was so full of comfort, 
that to Frank Russel and myself he could not express it — ' it 
was so great above his pain.' This he said to us. Indeed it 
was admirable. A little after he said, one thing lay upon his 
spirit. I asked him what that was ? He told me it was, that 
God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of 
His enemies. At his fall, his horse being killed with the 
bullet, and, as I am informed, three horses more, I am told 
he bid them open to the right and left, that he might see the 
rogues run. Truly he was exceedingly beloved in the army, 
of all that knew him. But few knew him, for he was a precious 
young man fit for God. You have cause to bless the Lord. 
He is a glorious saint in heaven, wherein you ought exceedingly 
to rejoice. Let this drink up your sorrow, seeing these are 
not feigned words to comfort you, but the thing is so real and 
undoubted a truth. You may do all things by the strength of 
Christ. Seek that, and you shall easily bear your trial. Let 
this public mercy to the Church of God make you to forget 
your private sorrow. The Lord be your strength ; so prays 
" Your truly faithful and loving brother, 

"Oliver Cromwell. 

" My love to your daughter, and my cousin Percival, sister 
Desbrow, and all friends with you." 

Thus ended the battle of Marston Moor. It was the most 
decisive blow Charles had yet received ; but far from being so 
decisive now as it might have been. We have again to notice 
the indecision of the generals, Earls Manchester and Essex. 

♦ His own son, Oliver, who had been killed not long before. 



THE BATTLE OF MARSTON" MOOR. 97 

Nearly half the kingdom was in the possession of the Parlia- 
mentary party. The reasons for this vacillation it may be now 
well to notice. The nobility — it began ere this time to appear — 
notwithstanding they had very generally come into the earlier 
measures of opposition to Charles's government, both from 
their old hereditary jealousy of the Crown, and unusual oppres- 
sions and neglects ever since the accession of Henry II., were 
every day becoming more convinced that they had unwittingly 
contributed to place the people, under the guidance of their 
Commons' House, upon such a footing of equality with them- 
selves as had already engendered rivalry, and threatened mas- 
tership. They had now, therefore, eveiy disposition possible 
to coalesce with the Scots in entering into a peace with the 
king that should at once secure him in the possession of his 
" just power and greatness," and confirm in themselves those 
privileges of rank and birth whose best support, next to that of 
legitimate popular freedom, they saw to be. legitimate mo- 
narchical prerogative. But they went much further ; for the 
Earls of Essex and Manchester, who had been intrusted with 
the command of the Parliament's forces, and who might be 
said to be the representatives of the great body of the nobles 
with the army, had seemed, since the battle of Marston Moor, 
to neutralize the efforts of their soldiers, as though they were 
unwilling to make the popular cause too eminent ; and, though 
not actually to allow themselves to be beaten by the k ' ;, to 
make little advantage of his failures, and occasionally even to 
permit him to avail himself of a drawn battle, or a positive de- 
feat, as though it had been to him a victory. Owing to these 
causes, it had become apparent that the Parliament, instead of 
approaching the state of things they so much desired, and by 
which they had once hoped effectually to give law to their 
sovereign, were even yet losing ground in the contest. Essex 
endured a complete and total failure. He allowed himself to 
be pushed on to the west, until, disbanding his troops, he took 
boat from Plymouth, and escaped to London, where, however, 
he was well received by the Parliament. Meantime Cromwell 
and Manchester were together in Berkshire,, and Manchester 
had certainly met with precisely the same success but for 
Cromwell. As it was, the latter could only partially secure the 
success of the Parliament, because compelled to act under the 
command of the Earl. Newbury had already been the scene of 
one contest ; its neighborhood was destined to be the scene of 
another. It might have been decisive. Cromwell saw this, 
and he implored Manchester to allow him to make an effort to 



98 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

prostrate the king ; but the earl refused. It was a golden op- 
portunity, this, for retrieving all the losses of Essex, and finish- 
ing the campaign gloriously — so gloriously began by the battle 
of Marston Moor. The event of this skirmish, too, convinces 
us that had Charles more frequently commanded in person, he 
would more frequently have been victor. 

It was a moonlight night following the fight of Donnington. 
The ground all round was strewed with dead bodies ; and the 
day closed, leaving it in possession of the Royalists. They 
occupied a central position, well fortified by nature and by art : 

"It was a moonlight night which followed, and anxious 
thoughts occupied both camps of the desperate strife that must 
decide the morrow. Suddenly the penetrating and sleepless 
eye of Cromwell saw the Royalists move. It was so. Charles, 
having utterly lost his left position, had despaired of the poor 
chance that remained to him in the face of such a foe. His 
army were now busy in that moonlight, conveying into the 
castle by a circuitous route their guns and heavy stores ; while 
behind, battalion after battalion was noiselessly quitting its 
ground, and marching off as silently in the direction of Oxford. 
Over and over again Cromwell entreated Manchester to suffer 
him to make a forward movement with his cavalry. At that 
critical moment he would have prostrated Charles. Manchester 
refused. A show was made next morning of pursuit, but of 
course without effect. Charles, with all his material and pris- 
oners, had effected a clear escape. Nor \\^s this all. While 
the Castle of Donnington remained unmolested amid the dread- 
ful dissensions which from this event raged through the Parlia- 
mentarian camp, the king, having been re-enforced by Rupert 
and an excellent troop of horse, returned twelve days after, 
assumed the offensive in the face of his now inactive con- 
querors, carried off all his cannon and heavy stores from out of 
the castle, coolly and uninterruptedly fell back again, and 
marched unmolested into Oxford." 

And so thus unsuccessfully ended the work which was be- 
gun so successfully at Marston Moor. Well might Cromwell 
thereupon say, ."There will never be a good time in Eng- 
land till we have done with lords ! " Manchester and Crom- 
well came to a quarrel after this second Newbury fight. 
Their opposition was very marked. 

" They in fact come to a quarrel here," says Carlyle, " these 
two, and much else that was represented by them came to a 
quarrel : Presbytery and Independency, to wit. Manchester 
was reported to have said, if they lost this army pursuing the 



THE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR, 99 

king, they had no other. The king might hang them. To 
Cromwell and the thorough-going party it had become very 
clear that high Essexes and Manchesters, of limited notions 
and large estates and anxieties — who, besides their fear of be- 
ing beaten utterly, and forfeited and ' hanged,' were afraid of 
beating the king too well — would never end this cause in a 
good way." 

Again we have arrived at a pausing point, where the reader 
may look round him and notice the scenery, and reconnoiter 
the state of parties, and the three great personalities meeting 
him here, Presbyterianism, Independency, and Cromwell. 
We have seen that the Scots marched into England to the 
aid of the Parliament. We shall now see that they desired, 
in the subversion of Episcopacy, the elevation of Presbyte- 
rianism. Meantime there had arisen a large party, represent- 
ing at that time, indeed, the mind of England — Indepen- 
dents, who thought with Milton ihdX presbyter was only priest 
writ large, who continued to plead for the right of private 
judgment and universal toleration in religion, setting the 
will of individual churches as the rule and ordinance in church 
matters. Of this large party, Cromwell was the representa- 
tive ; of the other, the Earls we have mentioned, as the gen- 
erals of the Parliamentary army, may be regarded as the 
representatives in the camp. There were, therefore, two de- 
terring motives preventing them from aiming at entire success. 
As members of the House of Peers, they feared lest they 
should raise up too formidable a rival in the Commons ; and 
they saw, or seemed to see, in the Presbyterian party the 
means of holding in check the power they dreaded. We may 
not, however, so much charge them with real treachery, as an 
utter want of enthusiasm. 

But whatever was the cause of failure, hitherto the Parlia- 
mentary cause had comparatively failed — failed in the midst 
of successes — failed evidently from the simple want of de- 
cision and rapid energy. It became necessary to change the 
tactics of war. Cromwell no doubt felt that he could bring 
the matter to an issue and decision at once ; and that he 
would do so was feared, apparently, by the leaders of the 
army and by the Presbyterians. He was now powerful 
enough to excite jealousy. It was probably felt that he was 
the strongest man in the kingdom, and the wisest in these 
councils and debates ; for this reason, many, efforts were made 
to sel: him on one side, to this the S^ots Commissioners 
especially aimed. It was known that Cromwell was a 



xbo OLIVER CROMWELL, 

thorough Englishman — that he was Hkely to increase in 
power and influence. A conspirac)% therefore, was set on 
foot to crush him, of which Whitelock gives to us the particu- 
lars. The conspiracy aimed at the reputation, perhaps at the 
very life, of Cromwell. The record given by Whitelock is 
very curious, more especially as he has preserved so entirely 
the colloquial form. One evening, very late, he informs us, 
he was sent for by the Lord-General Essex, "and there was 
no excuse to be admitted, nor did we know before the occa- 
sion of our being sent for. When we came to Essex House, 
we were brought to the Lord-General, and with him were the 
Scots Commissioners, Mr. Holies, Sir Philip Stapylton, Sir 
John Meyrick, and divers others of his special friends. After 
compliments, and that all were set down in council, the Lord- 
General having requested the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, 
as the better orator, to explain the object of the meeting, the 
latter spake to this effect : 

" Mr. Maynard and Mr. Whitelock . , . you ken vary 
weel that Lieuten ant-General Cromwell is no friend of ours ; 
and, since the advance of our army into England, he hath used 
all underhand and cunning means to take from our honor and 
merit of this kingdom ; an evil requital for all our hazards and 
services : but so it is ; and we are, nevertheless, fully satisfied 
of the affections and gratitude of the gude people of this nation 
in the general. 

"It is thought requisite for us, and for the carrying on of 
the cause of the twa kingdoms, that this obstacle, or remora, 
may be refnoved out of the way ; whom, we foresee, will other- 
wise be no small impediment to us, and the gude design we 
have vmdertaken. 

" He not only is no friend to us, and to the government of 
our church, but he is also no well-wisher to His Excellency, 
whom you all have cause to love and honor ; and, if he be per- 
mitted to go on his ways, it may be, I fear, endanger the whole 
business : therefore, we are to advise of some course to be 
taken tor the prevention of that mischief. 

" You ken vary weel the accord 'twixt the tw^a kingdoms, 
and the union by the solemn league and covenant ; and it may 
be an incendiary between the twa nations, how is he to be pro- 
ceeded against 1 Now, the matter wherein we desire your 
opinions, is, what you tak the meaning of this word ' incendi- 
ary ' to be ; and whether Lieutenant-General Cromwell be not 
sic an incendiary, ?is is meant thereby ; and whilke way wud be 
best to take to proceed against him, if he be proved to be sic an 



THE BA TTLE OF 2ifARST0N MOCK, xoi 

incendiary, and that will clepe his wings from soaring to the 
prejudice of our cause. 

" Now you may ken that, by our law in Scotland, we 'clepe 
him an incendiary wha kindleth coals of contention, and raiseth 
differences, in the State, to the public damage ; and he is tan- 
quan piihlicus hostis patricE ; whether your law be the same or 
not, you ken best, who are mickle learned therein, and there- 
fore, with the favor of His Excellency, we desire your judg- 
ment thereon." 

But the lawyers were wary ; moreover they perhaps knew 
the madness of his attempt, and saw into its design^ and their 
answer brought the plot to a standstill. 

Whitelock replied, " that if such proofs could * be made out,' 
then he was ' to be proceeded against for it by Parliament, upon 
his being there accused of such things.' He added that he 
took ^ Lieutenant- General Cro77iwell to be a gentleman of quick 
and subtle parts ^ and one who had^ especially of late, gained 7i§ 
small i?ite7'esf in the House of Conwions : 7ior was he wanti7ig in 
friends in the House of Peers ; 7ior of abilities ifi hi77iself to man- 
age his aivnpart or defense to the best advantage.' In conclusion, 
he could not * advise that, at that time, he should be accused 
for an incenclary ; but rather that direction might be given to 
collect such passages relating to him, by which their lordships 
might judge whether they would amount to prove him an in- 
cendiary or not.' Maynard, afterward speaking, observed that 
^ Lieutenant- General C7'077iwell was apersoji of great favor and 
i7iterest ivith the House of Com77io7ts, a7id with some of the House 
of Peers likewise;' and that, therefore, 'there must be proofs, 
and the more clear and evident, against him, to prevail with 
the Parliament to adjudge him to be an incendiary ; ' which he 
believed would * be more difficult than perhaps some might 
imagine to fasten upon him.' " 

While this plot was in movement, Cromwell certainly ap- 
pears to have been himself laboring to curtail the power of 
the General Earls. He impeached Manchester with backward- 
ness in entrance upon engagements. He appears in his 
speech, in the House of Commons, to have run over a series 
of charges, certainly affecting the fitness of his commander 
for his post. Manchester in turn accused CrCmwell of saying 
that it "would never be well with England until the Earl was 
plain Mr. Montague ; that the Scots had crossed the Tweed 
only for the purpose of establishing Presbyterian ism ; and 
that, in that cause, he would as soon draw his sword against 
them as against the king ; and sundry other things." 



103 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

The charges against both, on both sides, dropped; but the 
House of Commons resolved itself into a committee for the 
purpose of considering how best to bring the war to an issue. 

On this occasion the speech of Cromwell was masterly in the 
extreme ; he concluded by calling for a remodeling of the 
whole army, a stricter discipline, and a measure aiming at the 
dismissal of the Earls of Essex, Manchester, and Dembigh. 
This was the famous Self-denying Ordinance, by which all 
members of the Senate were incapacitated for serving in the 
army. The Lords protested against this, because it would 
effectually cut off all their body from being perpetual peers ; 
but this was its very object. Sir Thomas Fairfax, not a mem- 
ber, was for that reason elected to supreme command ; and 
thus, it appeared, that some obstacles were removed. Could 
it be imagined that the power and place of Cromwell were also 
suspended ? The Parliament, at any rate in his instance, sus- 
pended the Self-denying Ordinance ; was not this a proof that 
it was perceived that he was the most capable man in the 
kingdom ? 



CHAPTER IX. 

Cromwell's contemporaries : prince rupert. 

Prince Rupert has often been called the evil genius of 
Charles, but it would perhaps be quite as true, if not more so, 
to designate Charles as the evil genius of Rupert. There is, 
no doubt, a not unnatural prejudice against the prince, as a 
foreigner, commanding the royal army against the arms of the 
Parliament and the people ; and his name had something of a 
mythical character attaching to it ; he springs suddenly upon 
lis and upon our nation as somethmg even like a wild hunter. 
Our readers ought to make themselves distinctly acquainted 
with this singular person, who seems to hold much the same 
place — however inferior in capacity and command — in the 
royal armies which Cromwell held in that of the Parliament. 
Who was this Prince Rupert ? Our readers will perhaps re- 
member the magnificent festivities which gladdened the Court 
and the nation when, in 1613, the marriage of Elizabeth of 
England, the daughter of James L, was solemnized, in her 
sixteenth year, with the Prince Palatine, the Elector of Bohe- 
mia. If we may judge from contemporaneous chronicles, the 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES: PRINCE RUPERT. 103 

beauty of this only surviving sister of Charles was singular; 
she was called the " Pearl of Britain," and the " Queen of 
Hearts ; " while the charming symmetry of her form and 
features are said to have been enhanced by the exquisite play 
of soft expression over her face. It has been said that history 
borrows the colors of romance when she paints this fair young 
princess on the morning of her marriage, as she passed along 
to the chapel over a gallery raised for the purpose, glowing in 
all the lights of loveliness and majesty, arrayed in white, her 
rich dark hair falling over her shoulders, and on her head a 
crown of pure gold ; one hand locked in that of her brother 
Charles, and the other leaning on the arm of the old Earl of 
Northampton; her train of noble bridesmaids followed on 
her steps. It is said that England had never seen the equal 
to the sumptuous splendor of this marriage ; the bravery and 
riches were incomparable, the gold, the silver, the pearls, the 
diamonds and every variety of jewels. The king's, queen's, 
and prince's jewels were valued alone at ;!^9oo,ooo sterling. 
Then came magnificent masques, and the mock fight upon the 
Thames ; and then some gay masque representing the mar- 
riage of the Thames and the Rhine ; and at night fireworks 
blazing over London. For the marriage was very popular, 
and was supposed to be a good omen for the cause of Prot- 
estantism. And when the fair princess reached the country 
of her adoption, the same romantic and festive lights for some 
time shone round her ; the grand old ruins of Heidelberg still 
retain the memories of her residence there, and romantic fic- 
tion has sought to charm the old walls and rooms of the fa- 
mous ruin with her presence. 

She was the mother of Prince Rupert. He was born at 
Prague, in 16 19 ; his father had claimed to be, and had got 
himself and his fair young queen crowned, king and queen of 
Bohemia, so that the prince was born with all the assumptions 
of royalty around him. But his genealogist says, " He began 
to be illustrious many years before his birth, and we must look 
back into history, above two thousand years, to discover the 
first rays of his glory. We may consider," continues the 
writer, " him very great, being descended from the two most 
illustrious and ancient houses of Europe, that of England and 
Palatine of the Rhine." And then the writer goes on to trace 
up his ancestry to Attila, Charlemagne, and so down through 
a succession of Ruperts, Louis, Fredericks. The facts after 
the birth of Rupert are an affecting satire upon all this. All 
the festive chambers became but the rooms in a house of 



104 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

mourning \ the poor Queen Elizabeth shortly became a widow, 
an exile from the land of her birth, an outcast from the coun- 
try of her adoption and ambition ; all the dark destinies of the 
Stuarts were realized in her story. When Rupert reached 
manhood, she appears to have been a pensioner on Holland ; 
her brother Charles had attained to the English crown, his 
troubles had not yet commenced, so as to prevent him from 
giving some help to his sister ; but he appears to have given 
none, and only invited her to England with so much indiffer- 
ence that the cold hospitality was refused. 

Rupert was in the army of the Netherlands, attaining 
some Uttle experience in war ; but on the whole passing in 
those young days a restless and purposeless life. Then he 
became an Austrian prisoner in the grim old castle of Lintz, 
and a long time passed on in obscurity and silence, illuminated, 
however, by a pleasing, apparently innocent and romantic love 
story. The Count Kuffstein, the governor of Lintz, had a 
daughter, an only daughter; and the old governor, his stern 
imagination somewhat touched by the misfortunes of his royal 
prisoner, charged his daughter to care for him, watch over him, 
and minister some comfort to him — to do which, perhaps, the 
young lady was not indisposed. So, however, went on some 
love passages in the dark rooms of the old castle hanging over 
the rolling Danube — ^^passages which the prince seems not to 
have forgotten through the future years and vicissitudes of his 
strange career. At length the time of his release came, appar- 
ently through the pathetic interest of his mother. Then the 
storm rose in England, and Rupert accepted in good time an 
invitation from his Uncle Charles. 

He reached England at the time when the queen, Henrietta 
Maria, was meditating her flight- and he attended her to Hol- 
land, and thence, returning again, he joined the poor little 
Court of his uncle in the old castle of Nottingham ; and from 
this moment his name figures prominently in the story of the 
times. It is only just to him to remember that, after all the 
experiences through which he had passed, he was not yet 
twenty-three years of age. We can very well believe the ac- 
counts which represent him as an accession of no ordinary 
kind to the company of friends and counselors gathered 
around the king. There was little cheerfulness in that assem- 
bly; naturally enough, the spirits of the king were dark and 
drooping. We need not suppose that the yo-ing pimce 
brought much wisdom to the councils, but his daring impetu- 
osity, the promptitude and vigorous decision in the character 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES : FRTNCE RUPERT, 105 

of the young man, must have been like a gale of new life ; he 
did not come of a wise and thoughtful race, but, on the other 
hand, there does seem to have been a dash of magnanimity 
in his character which seldom shone, and only in occasional 
gleams, in the more distinguished representatives of the 
Stuart race. Recklessness was his vice ; but the portraits of 
him at this period present quite an ideal cavalier, and perhaps 
he has always been regarded as the' representative cavalier. 
His moral and intellectual nature would seem to have been 
derived from his mother : the handsome physique, the high- 
bred Norman nose, the supercilious upper lip, the handsome 
stately form, seem to bear testimony to his father's race. 
Assuredly, a figure more unlike to that grotesque piece of 
humanity, his grandfather, James I., it is impossible to con- 
ceive ; the long love-locks of the cavalier fell over his shoulders, 
and he is described as altogether such a person as Vandyke 
loved to transfer to his canvases, and ladies would regard 
with attractive interest. Of the great question, the profound 
matters, which led to the solemn discussions of his uncle with 
the people of England, we may believe him to be utterly ig- 
norant ; it is not saying too much to assert that they were 
quite beyond the comprehension of a nature like that of 
Prince Rupert. It is worthy of notice that the mighty enjoy- 
ment of his life was a hunt ; to him might have been applied 
the words of the Danish ballad, 

" With my dogs so good 
I hunt the wild deer in the wood." 

And every conflict in which he engaged on English ground 
seems merely to have been regarded by him as a kind of wild 
hunt. Off he started in the impetuosity of the fight, and, as 
we shall see again and again, having left the field as he sup- 
posed in the possession of his army, and started off in mad 
pursuit, he returned to discover that he had missed his oppor- 
tunity, and the field was lost. Such was Prince Rupert, such 
his relationship to Charles, and the circumstances which 
brought him to the Royalist army. 



io6 OLIVER CROMWELL, 



CHAPTER X. 

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY. 

Now we shall push on more rapidly. The Self-denying 
Ordinance is regarded as a masterpiece of duplicity originating 
from the mind of Cromwell. The superseding of the most 
illustrious officers in the People's army was hailed by the Roy- 
alists as a sure prelude to their thorough routing. The king 
was in high hopes. It was about this time he wrote to the 
queen, "I may, without being too much sanguine, affirm, that 
since the rebellion my affairs were never in so fair and hope- 
ful a way." Cromwell, certainly, could not suppose that he 
long could be dispensed with ; but neither could he at all 
have known how soon his services would be required, and how 
important those services were to be. The supreme power, we 
have seen, was vested in the hands of Fairfax. It is quite 
noticeable that his commission was worded differently from 
the way in which all previous commissions had been worded. 
It was made in the name of the Parliament alone, not in that 
of the king and Parliament. 

" Toward the end of April," says M. Guizot, " Fairfax an- 
nounced that in a few days he should open the campaign. 
Cromwell went to Windsor, to kiss, as he said, the general's 
hand, and take him his resignation. On seeing him enter the 
room, Fairfax said, ' I have just received from the Committee 
of the Two Kingdoms an order which has reference to you. 
It directs you to proceed directly with some horse to the road 
between Oxford and Worcester, to intercept communications 
between Prince Rupert and the king.' The same evening 
Cromwell departed on his mission, and in five days, before 
any other corps of the new army had put itself in motion, he 
had beaten the Royalists in three encounters (April 24th, at 
Islip Bridge ; 26th, at Witney ; 27th, at Bampton Bush), taken 
Bletchington (April 24th), and sent to the House a full report 
of his success. ' Who will bring me this Cromwell, dead or 
alive ! ' cried the king ; while in London all were rejoicing 
that he had not yet given in his resignation. 

" A week had scarcely passed, and the Parliament had al- 



THE BATTLE OF NASEBY. 107 

ready made up its mind that he should not resign. The cam- 
paign had commenced (April 30th). The king quitted Ox- 
ford (May 7th), had rejoined Prince Rupert, and was proceed- 
ing toward the north, either to raise the siege of Chester or 
give battle to the Scottish army, and regain on that side its 
former advantages. If he succeeded, he would be in a posi- 
tion to threaten, as he pleased, the east or the south; and 
Fairfax, then on his way to the west to deliver the important 
town of Taunton, closely invested by the Prince of Wales, 
could not oppose his progress. Fairfax was recalled (May 
5th) ; but, meantime, Cromwell alone was in a condition to 
watch the king's movements. Notwithstanding the Ordinance, 
he received orders to continue his service forty days (May 
loth)." 

The country was alarmed at the idea of Cromwell resigning 
at such a juncture as this. The Common Council petitioned 
Parliament, demanding a free discretion to be given to the 
General, and the permanent restoration of Cromwell to his for- 
mer command. The latter was confirmed by an application, 
signed by General Fairfax and sixteen of his chief officers, 
for Cromwell to join him as an officer indispensably needed 
to command the cavalry. 

. On the 1 2 th of June, 1645, a reconnoitering party of the 
Parliamentary cavalry unexpectedly came upon a detachment 
of the Royal army, leisurely returning from the north, on the 
news of the threatened blockade of Oxford. The king was 
flushed with the highest hopes. The success of Montrose in 
the north promised to free him from all fear in that direction, 
and he anticipated a body of troops to join him from the west. 
The meeting of outposts of the two armies was in the neigh- 
borhood of Northampton ; but the king fell back immediately 
toward Leicester, to allow his whole forces to draw together. 
On the following day Cromwell joined Fairfax amid shouts 
from the whole army, and, a few hours afterward, the king 
learned that the squadrons under his command were already 
harassing the rear. Prince Rupert advised an immediate at- 
tack on the enemy. A council of war was held, and many of 
the officers urged delay until the expected re-enforcements 
should join them ; but Rupert's advice prevailed. On the 
field of Naseby the two armies met once more in deadly fight 
early on the morning of the 14th of June. 

On the field of Marston the genius of Cromwell shone 
forth, as we have said, for the first time, amazing by its ma- 
jesty alike the army of the Parliament and the king. On the 



xoS OLIVER CROMWELL, 

field of Naseby the baton of Cromwell struck down the scep- 
ter from the hand of Charles, never in his day to be lifted by 
royal hands again. Naseby, we know, is a little village town in 
Leicestershire, near Market Harborough, and remains, we un- 
derstand, to this day very much what it was on the day of the 
battle in June, 1645. A wide, wavy, open country it is, and be- 
tween two elevations, hardly to be dignified by the name of 
hills, lies the field — spot of battle, spot of doom, " valley of the 
shadow of death " to how many brave men ! They still show 
the old table at Naseby where the guards of Rupert — the Cav- 
aliers — sat the night before the battle — an old oak table, 
deeply indented and stained with the carousals of ages. The 
battle of Marston field was decided by about ten o'clock at 
night; the battle of Naseby began about ten in the morning, 
a bright summer morning. When they met there, those two 
armies, amid the green heraldry of indignant Nature, beneath 
the song of the startled lark, and the gay varieties of the 
green earth, and the dappled sky, and the springing corn, 
there rose the Royalists' cry of " Queen Mary ! " answered by 
the stern, gruff battle-shout of the Ironsides, " God is with 
us ! " Eaipert knew that Cromwell was on the field, and 
sought to bring his troops against the mighty Roundhead ; 
but he found Ireton instead — a soldier who afterward, as 
Cromwell's son-in-law, exhibited rnuch of the iron resolve of 
his yet more illustrious father. If any field could have been 
won by passion alone, Rupert would have won not only 
Naseby, but many another field ; but we know that, as 
passion is one of the most frail elements of our nature, so 
Rupert was one of the most frail of men. At the head of 
his Cavaliers, in white sash and plume, he indeed flamed in 
brilliant gallantry over the field, shouting, " Queen Mary 1 
Queen Mary ! " while the more rough, unknightly soldiers 
thundered, " God is with us ! God is with us ! " Beholding 
Cromwell flying from one part of the field to another Hke 
lightning, breaking the enemy's lines, it might seem that he 
too, like Rupert, .was only impersonated passion ; but his vis- 
ion included the whole field, and held all that passion in 
mastery and in check. At one moment, a commander of the 
king's knowing Cromwell, advanced briskly from the head of 
his troops to exchange a single bullet with him. They en- 
countered, their pistols discharged, and the Cavalier, with a 
slanting back blow of the sword, cut the string of Oliver's 
hemlet, or morion. He was just about to repeat the stroke, 
but some of Cromwell's party passed by, rescued him, and 



THE BATTLE OF NASEBY. 109 

one of them threw his headpiece on his saddle. Hastily 
Cromwell caught it, and placed :t on, his head the wrong way, 
and so through the day a^ wors it; and everywhere his 
words, " God i3 wi:;n us ! " struck like light over his soldiers* 
hearts, like lightning over his enemies. What was there in 
the poor cry, " Queen Mary ! " (and such a Mary !) to kindle 
feelings like that ! Then at last the tide of the day turned, 
and the Royalists sunk, or attempted to retain a retreating 
fight among the gorse bushes and the rabbit warrens, which 
checked the Roundheads' charge. But on this field the pas- 
sionate Rupert, as at Marston, supposed that he had won the 
day, and, thinking the victory all his own, he clove his way 
back to the spot where the poor helpless king was cheering 
his dismayed troopers. Indeed, we can almost weep as we 
hear that cry from the king : " One charge more, gentlemen ! 
One charge more, in the name of God ! and this day is 
ours." He placed himself at the head of the troopers, and 
a thousand of them prepared to follow him. One of his 
courtiers snatched his bridle, and turned him from the path of 
honor to that of despair. " Why," says one writer, " was 
there no hand to strike that traitor to the ground t " Alas ! 
if the king's own hand could not strike that traitor to the 
ground, was it possible that another's could.? Who would 
.have dared to have taken Cromwell's bridle at such a mo- 
ment 1 And so, at the battle of Naseby, the crown fell from 
the king's head and the scepter from his hand, and he was 
henceforth never more in any sense a king. Poor king ! 
" Who will bring me," cried he in despair, " this Cromwell, 
dead or alive ? " Alas ! your majesty, who ? 

Everywhere Rupert was Charles's evil genius. Everywhere 
his impetuosity injured himself, his cause, and his royal mas- 
ter. He galloped forward two miles to ascertain the intentions 
of Fairfax ; and returning, sent word through the line that he 
was retreating. It was a ruse of Cromwell's. He had merely 
put in motion a few of his troops. Charles, trusting to the 
miserable deceiving and self-deception of Rupert, relinquished 
the favorable ground he occupied, and led his battalions into 
the plain. Here the great generals had fixed themselves in a 
remarkably strong position. Here they were thundering out 
their hymns in the very enthusiasm, of a triumph, rather than 
in expectation of a battle. Upon the field altogether there 
were about 36,000 men. Rupert began the battle. He 
charged Ireton with such boldness that even that lion-like 
officer sank before his terrible and bold and passionate on- 



110 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

slaught. Fairfax that day, abandoning the privileges of a gen- 
eral, performed feats of- valor in the thickest of the fight, bare- 
headed. He everywhere flamed resolution and courage over 
every part of the field, and especially among the ranks of his 
own men. But he failed to turn the fortune of the day. Ire- 
ton, on the left, was routed. Fairfax, in the center, remained 
struggling, the fate of his men undecided. Cromwell and his 
Ironsides stood there, upon the right. They were attacked by 
Sir Marmaduke Langdale — he might as well have attacked a 
rock — when the Royalists recoiled. The Ironsides in turn at- 
tacked them, poured over them a terrible and heavy fire, routed 
them, sent three squadrons after them to prevent their rallying, 
and with the remaining four hastened to Fairfax, and, with an 
overpowering shock, dashed through, scattered, and cut down 
the Royalists, hoping for victory in the center. In vain 
Charles, with remarkable bravery, sought to recover the for- 
tune of the fight. He no doubt felt at that moment the hope- 
less ruin of his cause. 

*' One more charge," said the poor defeated king, " and we 
recover the day." 

This is the moment which Lord Macaulay has seized in his 
fine lyric, "The Battle of Naseby," too lengthy to quote 
entire. The following verses commence with the rout of the 
Roundheads, and the sudden rush down of Oliver with his 
Ironsides ; 

" They are here ! They rush on ! "We are broken ! We are gone I 
Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast. 
O Lord, put forth Thy might ! O Lord, defend the right Y 
Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last. 

" Stout Skippon hath a wound ; the center hath given ground ; 
Hark ! hark ! Whafmeans the trampling of horsemen on our rear .^ 
Whose banner do I see, boys ? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys ! 
Bear up another minute : brave Oliver is here. 

** Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row, 
Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes, 
Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the accurst, 
And at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes. 

" Fast, fast the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide 
Their coward heads, predestined to rot on Temple Bar ; 
And he — he turns, he flies ; shame on those cruel eyes 
That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war." 

Never was rout more thorough and complete. Two thou- 
sand men were left dead on the field. " God is with us ! " had 



THE BA TTLE OF NASEB V. 1 1 1 

been the noble watchword of the Parliamentarians ; " Queen 
Mary ! " was the watchword of the Royalists. Is there not 
something very significant in the different success of such mot- 
toes ? The king here lost all. The prisoners taken were five 
thousand foot and three thousand horse. They captured the 
whole of Charles's artillery, eight thousand stand of arms, 
above a hundred pair of colors, the royal standard, the king's 
cabinet of letters (alas !), and the whole spoil of the camp. 
That cabinet of letters revealed, beyond all question, the per- 
fidy of the king ; proved that he never desired peace, and 
made his favorite exclamation, '' On the word of a king," a 
byword, and, for some time, the synonym of a lie. The let- 
ters were all published, after having been read aloud to the 
assembled citizens in Guildhall, that all the people might 
satisfy themselves of their monarch's probity. This battle 
was fought on the 14th of June, 1645, and increased Crom- 
well's influence amazingly. 

And now we follow him through a long series of most, dar- 
ing and brilliant adventures, conquests, and expeditions. Rap- 
idly he covered — he overspread the land with his victorious 
men of iron. His vigilance was wonderful. Town after town 
was taken. . He swept over the country like a tempest. Lei- 
cester, and thence to Bridgewater, Shaftesbury, Bristol, Devi- 
zes. Summoning the last-mentioned town to surrender : " Win 
it, and wear it," said the governor. Cromwell did both. He 
then stormed Berkeley Castle, and threw himself before Win- 
chester. The last-named place surrendered by capitulation. 
While here he very courteously sent in to the Bishop of Win- 
chester, and offered him a guard to secure his person ; but the 
bishop, flying into the castle, refused his courtesy. Afterward, 
when the castle began to be battered by two pieces of ordnance, 
he sent to the lieutenant-general, thanking him for the great 
favpr offered of him, and being now more sensible what it was, 
he desired the enjoyment of it. To whom the wise Heutenant- 
general replied, that since he made not use of the courtesy, 
but willfully ran away from it, he must now partake of the same 
conditions as the others who were with him in the castle ; and 
if he were taken, he must expect to be used as a prisoner of 
war. Another interesting incident illustrates Cromwell's strict 
severity in exacting compliance, from his own army, with its 
articles. When information was laid before him dy the van- 
quished that they had been plundered by some of his soldiers 
on leaving the city, contrary to the terms granted to them, he 
ordered the offenders to be tried by a court-martial, at which 



112 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

they were sentenced to death. Whereupon he ordered the un- 
fortunate men, who were six in number, to cast lots for the 
first sufferer ; and after his execution, sent the remaming five, 
with a suitable explanation, to Sir Thomas Glenham, Governor 
of Oxford, requesting him to deal with them as he thought fit : 
a piece of conduct which so charmed the Royalist officer, that 
he immediately returned the men to Cromwell, with a grateful 
compliment, and expression of much respect. 

Still on ! on ! After Winchester, Basing fell before him ; 
this was thought to be one of the most impregnable of for- 
tresses. Then Salisbury ; then Exeter, where he fought Lord 
Wentworth and took five hundred prisoners and six standards, 
one of which was the king's ; then pouring along Cornwall, he 
scattered the last remnants of the Royalist army ; and, by and 
by, after innumerable other victories, entered London, greeted 
with extraordinary honors. The instant he entered the House, 
all the members rose to receive him, and the Speaker pro- 
nounted a long and elaborate eulogium, closing with " the 
hearty thanks of the House for his many services." An an- 
nuity of ;^2 5oo appears to have been granted to Cromwell and 
his family, including estates escheated to the Parliamentary 
^ause. In the presence of all this, Hume's sneer at him as an 
inferior general is as laughable as it is contemptible and mean. 
Of those days of Cromv/ell's rapid flights hither and thither, all 
England retains to this day the foot-marks. No wonder that 
Essex and Manchester did not move sufficiently rapid for him. 
Cromwell, we see, decided the popular cause. Royalism now 
lay prostrate before his feet by a series of the most astounding 
victories of which our kingdom ever had the impress or told 
the tale. His presence was certain victory. Invincible ! we 
surely may call him. There is no corner of England where 
ruins of old feudal state or monastic grandeur are not coupled 
with the name of Cromwell ; and while, doubtless, his name 
will be mentioned in connection with spots he never saw, it 
yet gives to us an idea of the wonderful universality of his 
power and conquest. 



CROMWELL IN IRELAND, 1 1 3 



CHAPTER XI. 

CROMWELL IN IRELAND. 

But it has been said that there is one place where we dare 
not follow him— Ireland. Let us see. The Irish Roman Cath- 
oUcs had broken out in rebellion, and had massacred (according 
to various accounts) from fifty thousand to two hundred thou- 
sand victims. This was the Hibernian St. Bartholomew. The 
Irish, indeed, at this time determined on erasing every vestige 
of the English name from their country. 

This great insurrection had broken out in 1640; it was not 
until after a long succession of murders, pillages, wild confla- 
grations, and excommunications that Cromwell was cailedupon 
by the Parliament, in 1649, to go there as Lord-Lieutenant, to 
attempt what really must be a difficult conquest. Guizot says, 
" The Protestants of Ireland had been ejected from their 
houses, hunted down, slaughtered, and exposed to all the tor- 
tures that religious ::nd patriotic hatred could mvent ; a half- 
savage people, passionately attached to their barbarism, eager 
to avenge, in a day, ages of outrage and misery, with a proud 
joy committed excesses which struck their ancient masters with 
horror and dismay." And, in fact, Cromwell undertook the 
task with great reluctance, and probably foresaw that there 
would be terrible reprisals. 

" In fact," writes Merle D'Aubign^, *• the Catholics burned 
the houses of the Protestants, turned them out naked in the 
midst of winter, and drove them, like herds of swine, before 
them. If, ashamed of their nudity, and desirous of seeking 
shelter from the rigor of a remarkably severe season, these un- 
happy wretches took refuge in a barn, and concealed themselves 
under the straw, the rebels instantly set fire to it and burned 
them alive. At other times they were led without clothing to 
be drowned in rivers ; and if, on the road, they did not move 
quick enough, they were urged forward at the point of the 
pike. When they reached the river or the sea, they were pre- 
cipitated into it, in bands of several hundreds, which is doubt- 
less an exaggeration. If these poor wretches arose to the sur- 
face of the water, men were stationed along the brink to plunge 
them in ^gdn with the butt§ of their muskets, or to fire at and 



114 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

kill them. Husbands were cut to pieces in the presence of their 
wives ; wives and virgins were abused in the sight of their 
nearest relations ; and infants of seven or eight years were hung 
before the eyes of their parents. Nay the Irish even went so 
far as to teach their own children to strip and kill the children 
of the English, and dash out their brains against the stones. 
Numbers of Protestants were buried alive, as many as seventy 
in one trench. An Irish priest, named MacOdeghan, captured 
forty or fifty Protestants, and persuaded them to abjure their 
religion on a promise of quarter. After their abjuration, he 
asked them if they believed that Christ was bodily present in 
the Host, and that the Pope was head of the Church ? and on 
their replying in the affirmative, he said, * Now, then, you are 
in a very good faith ! ' and, for fear they should relapse into 
heresy, he cut all their throats." 

Let these facts always be borne in mind when we look 'on 
Cromwell in Ireland. 

This rebellion, which broke out in 1640, had, through the 
necessity of the times, been much neglected till 1649. ^^^ 
Parliament, indeed, had long before got possession of Dublin, 
which was delivered up to them by the Marquis of Ormond, 
who was then obliged to come over to England. , But being 
recalled by the Irish, Ormond made a league with them in favor 
of the king, and brought over most. of the kingdom into a 
union with the Royalists. Londonderry and Dublin were the 
only places that held out for the Parliament, and the latter was 
in great danger of being lost. This compelled Colonel Jones, 
the Governor, to send over to England for succor ; and a con- 
siderable body of forces was thereupon ordered for Ireland. 
The command of these was offered to Cromwell, who accepted 
it with seeming reluctance ; professing " that the difficulty 
which appeared in the expedition, was his chief motive for 
engaging in it ; and that he hardly expected to prevail over the 
rebels, but only to preserve to the Commonwealth some footing 
in that kingdom." 

The Parliament was so pleased with his answer, that on the 
22d of June, 1649, it gave him a commission to command all 
the forces that should be sent into Ireland, and to be Lord- 
Governor of that kingdom for three years, in all affairs both 
civil and military. From the very minute of his receiving this 
charge, Cromwell used an incredible expedition in the raising 
of money, providing of shipping, and drawing the forces to- 
gether for their intended enterprise. The soldiery marched 
with great speed to the rendezvous at Milford Haven, there to 



CROMWELL IN IRELAND, 115 

expect the new Lord-Deputy, who followed them from London 
on the loth of July. His setting out was very pompous, 
being drawn in a coach with six horses, and attended by many 
members of the ParUament and Council of State, with the chief 
of the army ; his life-guard, consisting of eighty men who had 
formerly been commanders, all bravely mounted and accou- 
tered, both they and their servants. 

He was received with extraordinary honors at Bristol. 
Thence he went to Wales, and embarked for Ireland from the 
lovely and magnificent haven of Milford, and at last arrived in 
Dublin. Reviewing his army of twelve thousand men — appar- 
ently a small army, indeed, for such a work ! — there, he ad- 
vanced to Drogheda, or Tredagh, which he took by storm. 
His advance through the country was a continued triumph, a 
repetition of the same wonderful career which closed the war 
with Charles in England. The taking of Tredagh was a feat of 
extraordinary strength ; so much so, that the brave O'Neal 
swore a great oath, " That if Cromwell had tsiken Tredagh, if 
he could storm hell, he would take it also ! " Terrible also was 
the contest of Clonmell, before which Cromwell sat down with 
the resolution of fighting and of conquest. 

Many persons were here taken, and among them the cele- 
brated fighting Bishop of Ross, who was carried to a castle 
kept by his own forces, and there hanged before the walls, in 
sight of the garrison; which so discouraged them that they 
immediately surrendered to the Parliament's forces. This 
bishop was used to say, " There was no way of curing the Eng- 
lish, but by hanging them." 

For all this tremendous havoc, the most terrible oath an 
Irishman knows to the present day is " The curse of Crom- 
well ! " And the massacres and the besiegements are ever 
called in to blacken the great general's memory by writers, for 
instance, like Clarendon. And what did Cromwell ^o first 7 
All husbandmen, and laborers, plowmen, artificers, and oth- 
ers of the meaner sort ot the Irish nation, were to be exempted 
from question in reference to the eight years of blood and mis- 
ery, now ended. As to the ringleaders, indeed, and those who 
could be proved to be really concerned in the massacre of 
1641, there was for these a carefully graduated scale of punish- 
ments — banishment, death, but only after exact inquiry and 
proof. Those in arms at certain dates against the Parliament, 
but not in the massacre, these were not to forfeit their estates, 
but lands, to a third of their value, in Connaught were to be 
assigned to them. Others not well affected to Parliament were 



n6 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

to forfeit one third of their estates, and to remain quiet at their 
peril. The Catholic aristocracy, we see, were to be punished 
for their guilty bloodsheddings, but the "plowmen, hus- 
bandmen, and artificers of the meaner sort were to be exempted 
from all question." Clarendon admitted that Ireland flour- 
ished under this arrangement to a surprising extent ; and 
Thomas Carlyle well says, " This curse of Cromwell, so called, 
is the only gospel of veracity I can yet discover to have been 
ever fairly afoot there." 

Cromwell returned to London in the month of May, 1650, as 
a soldier who had gained more laurels and done more wonders 
in nine months than any age or history could parallel, and 
sailed home, as it were, in triumph. At Bristol he was twice 
saluted by the great guns, and welcomed back with many othef 
demonstrations of joy. On Hounslow Heath he was met by 
General Fairfax, many members of Parliament, and officers of 
the army, and multitudes of the common people. Coming to 
Hyde Park, he was received by the Lord Mayor and Corpora- 
tion of the City of London ; the great guns were fired off, and 
Colonel Barkstead's regiment, which was drawn up for that 
purpose, gave him several volleys with their small arms. Thus 
in a triumphant manner he entered London, amid a crowd of 
attendants, and was received with the highest acclamations. 
And after resuming his place in Parliament, the Speaker, in 
an eloquent speech, returned him the thanks of the House for 
his great and faithful services in Ireland; after which, the 
Lord-Lieutenant gave them a particular account of the state and 
condition of that kingdom. It was while he rode thus in state 
through London that Oliver replied to some sycophantic per- 
son, who had observed, " What a crowd comes out to see your 
lordship's triumph ! " " Yes ; but if it were to see me hanged, 
how many more would there be ! " Here is a clear-headed, 
practical man. 

But it was a busy life ; his three years Lord-Lieutenancy had 
evidently been remitted; for other and urgent matters de- 
manded such a baton as he alone could wield; and when he 
had struck down the rebellion, the Parliament recalled him, 
and he arrived in London May 31st, 1650. On the 29th of 
June, within a single month of his arrival at home, he set forth 
on his great mihtary expedition to Scotland. The Parliament 
had wished Lord Fairfax to take command, and set things right 
there ; but, although Fairfax was an Independent, his wife was 
a Presbyterian, and she would not allow her husband to go. 
We believe that it was very well that it was so. 



CROMWELL AT DUNBAR, si; 



CHAPTER XII. 

CROMWELL AT DUNBAR. 

Mr. Andrew Bisset has written at greater length probably 
than any other recent historian, concerning what he calls 
Cromwell's invasion of Scotland, and especially concerning 
the battle of Dunbar. The description of that battle-field, 
our readers do not need to be told, is one of Carlyle's noblest 
battle-pieces. Mr. Bisset, however, writes in the earnest de- 
sire in some measure to account for, and to cover the disgrace 
of, that defeat. Nor does he altogether fail. He entertains 
a pleasant idea that Cromwell was a poor general ; that he 
never on any occasion, not even at Dunbar, exhibited that 
higher military genius which dazzles and excites. He believes 
that his merit as a general was conhned to his raising a body 
of troops who were well fed and well disciplined. Cromwell, 
he thinks, had a fertile genius in craft, and, to use historian Bis- 
set's words, " There are many villains who owe their success, 
both in public and private life, to the same arts by which Oli- 
ver Cromwell overreached his friends and his party, and made 
himself absolute ruler of England, Scotland, and Ireland." 
It is singular that, according to the theory of Mr. Bisset, the 
amazing craft which he unquestionably possessed in council, 
he never displayed on the field. He remarks again : " The 
battle of Dunbar was the only battle in these wars, except 
those battles fought by Montrose, in which any considerable 
degree of generalship was shown. Most of the battles of this 
great Civil War were steady pounding matches, where the hostile 
armies drew up in parallel lines, and fought till one was 
beaten." It is not necessary to stay a moment to refute this 
eminently foolish verdict of a really very well-informed man ; 
still, had we any personal acquaintance with Mr. Bisset, we 
should like to lay before him the strategic plans of the fields 
of Marston, Naseby, and others, which perhaps would demon- 
strate that they were no more mere " pounding matches " than 
were any of the great fields of Marlboiough or of Wellington. 
It certainly does appear that David Leslie, the commander of 
the Scots at Dunbar, found his hands tied by a committee ; 
and any kind cf battle anywhere may be lost, but, probably, 



ii8 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

no battle of any kind was ever gained, by a committee. The 
English army reached Dunbar on the night of Sunday, the 
ist of September, 1650; it was rainy and tempestuous 
weather ; the poor army drew up amid swamps and bogs, but 
could not pitch a tent ; the expressions in Cromwell's letter 
seem to show that he felt himself reduced to extremities. To 
those extremities we may refer presently. A dispassionate 
glance, however, at the state of affairs, does not permit us to 
suppose that, under the most favorable circumstances, the 
Scots could have been successful, A piece of grim folly it 
appears, to constitute a Committee of Estates, or a Committee 
of Court Commissioners into a council of war, to regulate and 
coerce the will of a commander or general of forces. But 
this was actually the case ; and it was to this Committee 
Cromwell was indebted for that false move which Leslie 
made, and which the vigilant eye of the great EngHsh com- 
mander so soon perceived and turned to fearful account. 
But it appears clearly the case that, if Leslie had not made 
this disadvantageous move, he could have had little chance 
against the inferior number of the English army. Cromwell's 
soldiers were no doubt in uncomfortable circumstances amid 
the swamps and the bogs, but they were well appointed, well 
trained, and disciplined, well fed, and well armed ; in fact, 
they had come forth, as Mr. Bisset pleases to call it, to invade 
Scotland! but in reality to repel the Scotch invasion of Eng- 
land ; and the English nation was behind them. 

The Scottish country in those days was not charming ; the 
contrast is strongly expressed by some of the invaders of their 
impressions of the Scottish as contrasted with the EngHsh 
villages. For the English village, even in those days, was 
perhaps not less romantic and picturesquely pleasant than 
now ; nay, perhaps, in innumerable instances even more so. 
The pleasant village green, the old stone church, even then 
of many generations, the — compared with our times — rough 
but yet well-to-do farm, perhaps generally of that style we call 
the " watling plaster," the straggling laborers' cottages, run- 
ning along the village for a mile, with their gardens, if not 
trim and neat, yet, from what we know of the Culpeppers and 
other such writers of the time, redundant in their wealth of 
herbs and flowers ; the old villages of the England of that 
day look quite as attractive, beneath their lines of rugged 
elms and their vast yew trees' shade, as now. Those belong- 
ing to the Protector's army who have recorded their impres- 
sions, contrast all this with that which greeted their eyes in 



CROMWELL AT DUNBAR. 



119 



Scottish villages as they passed along. They saw nothing to 
remind them of the beauty of the English village ; for the 
most part these were assemblages of mere clay or mud hovels. 
Land, it seemed, was too valuable in Scotland to be wasted 
on cottage gardens and village greens. And from such homes 
as these the inhabitants were dragged forth by their lairds 
with no very good will of their own, and they appear, as they 
gathered into their ranks, to have been badly fed and badly 
accoutered. All this may partly apologize for the exceedingly 
irascible language historian Bisset indulges in when he says, 
" In the long black catalogue of disasters brought upon Scot- 
land, during a period of five hundred years, by rulers whom 
God in His wrath had sent to be her curse, her scourge, and 
her shame, there is none greater or more shameful than this 
rout of Dunbar." The good historian Bisset, it would seem, 
has some personal strong feelings which irritate him as he 
attempts to depreciate the merits of the victory of Cromwell 
at Dunbar, Our readers will perhaps think his notes of de- 
preciation very slight when he alleges, that Cromwell had not 
g"ained the victory probably, only that in the first instance he 
availed himself of Leslie's bad move, and in the next instance 
in the conflict he " had the advantage of the initiative," which 
also seems very foolish reasoning on the part of historian 
Bisset. Whether in all the battles he fought he took the ini- 
tiative or not, it is not necessary here to discuss ; but he 
watched the moment^ whenever that moment might be, and 
then, striking sudden, swift, and sharp, with all the celerity 
of lightning, this was certainly a way, and for his enemies a 
very unpleasant way, Cromwell- had. 

But disposing of and dismissing Mr. Historian Bisset, it 
still remains true, that to see Cromwell in the full height of 
his greatness, we must follow him to Scotland, to Dunbar. 

It is tolerably easy to understand the state of the question. 
We have seen the Scots aiding the Parhament and doing 
battle with the king — nay, selling him. But they desired the 
victory of Presbyterianism ; Cromwellwasopposedto the eleva- 
tion of any sect. This was one chief cause of the antipathy 
of the Scotch. Then they invited Charles, son of the late 
king, from Holland, and proclaimed him king of the Scots ; 
they did not know, when they invited him, that, with the 
perfidy and villainy hereditary in his family, he had issued a 
commission empowering Montrose to raise troops and to 
subdue the country by force of arms. Our readers have not 
to learn, now, that Charles II. was, perhaps in a deeper 



120 Oj^ 

^^^R CROMWELL. 

degree than any of his ancc. , , . i i , r 
treacherous, and licentious. He I§.?^^ ^f /°°^^f iox^^xd. 
and Covenant of Scotland, supporting the^ ^^^P ^^^ deiiver- 
at the very moment he was in attempted u 
Rome for befriending the Papacy. He was, u ^ - 
claimed king of the Scots, and the Scots had a perfecT*..^. 
to elect him to be their monarch ; but he aimed at the re- 
covery of Scotland in order to recover the crowns of the 
three kingdoms. To win Scotland to help him in this, he 
would not only sign the Covenant, he proffered to sign a 
declaration by which he renounced all Papacy and Episco- 
pacy. But pledged word or oath were of very little account 
with him. 

It was surely a strange procedure, that in Scotland, where 
Jenny Geddes had hurled her cutty-stool against Poper}', and 
where first the storm had raged forth against the despotism 
and tyranny of the Stuarts — it was surely strange, that there, 
of all places in the British Empire, Charles II. should be 
received. It is clearly obvious that the aim of the Scotch 
clergy was to impose Presbyterianism upon the whole of the 
empire. ' Scotland looks very bad in this business. How- 
ever, Cromwell, now proclaimed Lord-General of the Parlia- 
mentary forces, has to march away with all speed to settle, 
as best he may, these new and final differences. He entered 
Scotland on the 23d of July, 1650, with 11,000 horse and 
foot, commanded under him by Generals Fleetwood, Lambert, 
and Whally , and Colonels Pride, Overton, and Monk. He 
found before him, whithersoever he went, a desolation ; the 
Scotch preachers had described the English soldiers as 
monsters, delighting in the murder or the mutilation of 
women and children. The peasantry, having destroyed what 
they must have been compelled to leave, fled with whatever 
they could remove. How far they misunderstood the charac- 
ter of their great enemy, we shall by and by see ; indeed, it 
appears that very soon the Scots came to know him better. 
There had come before him a report that the English anny 
intended to put all the men to the sword, and 'to thrust hot 
irons through the women's breasts ; but the general's proc- 
lamation soon eased them upon that score, and according to 
the documents of Whitelock, it appears that the women stayed 
behind their husbands, to provide bread and drink, by baking 
and brewing, for the English army. 

For a vivid, accurate knowledge— nay, more, for a bright, 
gleaming canvas cartQon, or picture, of the great battle of 



CROMWELL AT DU^BAR. 121 

above them. The enemy J'account as given us by Carlyle.* 

tioned, having these ad," that we can see the disposition of 

sensible of our dis^ the full array of all that magnificent 

and yet consoblonday, the 2d of September, 1650. The 

poor weakJi Dunbar comes out plainly before us, on its high 

^iiu^'windy hill, overlooking its ancient castle, and its rocky 

promontories stretching along the sea, fishing villages, and 

indenting bays. On the hills, see the long array of Leslie's 

army — one of the largest and most important Scotland ever 

mustered, twenty-seven thousand men skirting the Lammer- 

muirs ; and there, down beneath, near where the peninsula 

stretches out to the sea, there is Oliver, with his less than 

eleven thousand. He never was in so critical a position 

before. There is no retreat ; behind him is the sea. In 

front of him is Leslie and the heath — continents of bog and 

swamp, where none but the mountain sheep can, with any 

safety, travel — the Lammermoor. Well may we ask, What 

is Oliver to do now .? 

What is Oliver to do now ? It does appear as if he is to be 
annihilated here, in this wilderness ; for wide all round looms 
the desolation over the whole ground occupied by the contend- 
ing armies. It appears there were then only two houses and 
farmsteads. On this Monday there had been some slight 
skirmishing. Leslie's horse dashed across those little huts, 
occupied by Lambert's or Pride's foot and horse, and seized 
three prisoners, one a musketeer, a spirited fellow, with a 
wooden arm. On being brought before Leslie, he was asked, 
" Do the enemy intend to fight ? " The man replied, " What 
do you think we come here for ? We come for nothing else." 
" Soldier," said Leslie, " how will you fight, when you have 
shipped half 3^our men and all your great guns .'' " The answer 
was, " Sir, if you please to draw down your men, you shall 
find both men and great guns too." To one of the officers 
who asked him how he dared reply so saucily to the general, 
he said, " I only answer the question put to me." Leslie sent 
him across, free again, by a trumpet ; and making his way to 
Cromwell, he reported what had passed, adding, " I for one 
have lost twenty shillings by the business, plundered from me 
in this skirmish." Thereupon the Lord-General gave him two 
pieces, which are forty shillings, and sent him away rejoicing. 
It will be well also to read the following letter, in which we 
have so mingled a tone of cheerfulness and caution. He 

♦ Cromwell's " Letters and Speeches," vol. iii. p. 38. 



122 OLl P-ID^ CROMWELL. 

evidently was preparing for the woi?-. and yet looked forward 
to the probability of some interposition it help and deliver- 
ance. 

" To Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Governor of Newcastle: 7/ctr.^ 

" Dunbar, 2d September, 1650. 

" Dear Sir, — We are here upon an engagement very diffi- 
cult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the Pass at Cop- 
perspath, through which we can not go without almost a mir- 
acle. He lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to 
come that way without great difficulty; and our lying here 
daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination. 

" I perceive your forces are not in a capacity for present 
release. Wherefore, whatever becomes of us, it will be well 
for you to get what 'forces you can together; and the south to 
help what they can. The business nearly concerneth all good 
people. If your forces had been in a readiness to have fallen 
upon the back of Coppersgate, it might have occasioned sup- 
plies to have come to us. But the only wise God knows 
what is best. All shall work for good. Our spirits [minds] 
are comfortable, praised be the Lord, though our present con- 
dition be as it is. And indeed we have much hope in the 
Lord ; of whose mercy we have had large experience. 

"Indeed, do you get together what forces you can against ^ 
them. Send to friends in the south to help with more. Let 
H. Vane know what I write. I would not make it public, 
lest danger should accrue thereby. You know what use to 
make hereof. Let me hear from you. I rest, 

" Your servant, 

" Oliver Cromwell. 

" P.S. — It is difficult for me to send to you. Let me hear 
from you after ' you receive this.' " 

But hope, we have said, did by no means desert the gen- 
eral ; in the army of Leslie, and among the preachers accom- 
panying the army, there was confidence, and the presumption 
generated from confidence ; they expected soon to destroy the 
army of Cromwell, and to scatter it over the moors and over 
the sea, perhaps to have the illustrious general in their pow- 
er ; they expected to march on without interruption to Lon- 
don with the king. " But," says Cromwell, in one of his dis- 
patches, " in what they were thus lifted up, the Lord was 



CROMWELL AT D UNBAR. 1 23 

above them. The enemy lying in the posture before men- 
tioned, having these advantages, we lay very near to him, being 
sensible of our disadvantages, having some weakness of flesh, 
and yet consolation and support from the Lord Himself to our 
poor weak faith, wherein, I believe, not a few among us shared 
— that because of their numbers, because of their advantages, 
because of their confidence, because of our weakness, because 
of our strait, we were in the mount, and in the mount 
the Lord would be seen, and ihat He would find out a way 
of deliverance and salvation for us ; and indeed we had our 
consolations and our hopes." 

What language do you call this ? Is it fanaticism ? Is it 
hypocrisy ? 

Urged, it is said, by the clergy, who were admitted far too 
much to their councils — as a warrior and a general, Leslie ap- 
pears to have made a movement in the disposition of his 
army which, was fatally wrong. He is spoken of as a wise, 
clear-sighted man, and upon many previous occasions he had 
shown himself to be so , and it is possible that had he seized 
upon all the advantages of his position he might have been 
master of the field, but for that latal movement of the enemy, 
scarcely noticed by any eye but the active, penetrating glance 
of Cromwell's. " With wonderful foresight," says Mr. Fors- 
ter, " that almost justified the inspiration attributed to him, 
he anticipated some movement by which they might now be 
enabled to attempt the enemy, and secure the advantage of a 
first attack ; and, as he beheld it, he exclaimed, in one of 
those strong bursts of enthusiasm which ever and anon fell 
upon him, 'The Lord hath delivered them into our 

HANDS ! ' " 

Yes, with a vigor only equaled by Shakespeare's descrip- 
tions of night on the fields of Agincourt and Bosworth, Carlyle 
has sketched for us the disposition of those defiant hosts on 
this night of the 2d of September, a wild wet night : " The 
harvest moon wades deep among clouds of sleet and hail. 
Whoever has a heart for prayer, let him pray now, for the 
wrestle of death is at hand. Pray, and withal, keep his pow- 
der dry ! and be ready for extrerrities, and quit himself like a 
man. We English have some tact the Scots have none. 
The hoarse sea moans bodeful, swinging low and heavy 
against those Whinstone cliffs ; the sea and the tempests are 
abroad, all else asleep but we — and there js One that rides 
on the wings of the wind." 

The orders of the Scots were to extinguish their matches, 



124 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

to cower under the shocks of com, and seek some imperfect 
shelter and sleep; to-morrow night, for most of them, the 
sleep will be perfect enough, whatever the shelter may be. 
The order to the English was, to stand their arms, or to lie 
within reach of them all night. Some waking soldiers in the 
English army were holding prayer-meetings too. By moon- 
light, as the gray heavy morning broke over St. Abb's Head 
its first faint streak, the first peal of the trumpets ran along 
the Scottish host. But how unprepared were they then for 
the loud reply of the English host, and for the thunder of their 
cannons upon their lines. 

Terrible was the awakening of the Scottish soldiers ; and 
their matches all out : the battle-cry rushed along the lines — 
" The Covenant ! The Covenant ! " but it soon became more 
and more feeble, while yet high and strong, amid the war of 
the trumpets and the musketry, arose the watchword of Crom- 
well : " The Lord of Hosts ! The Lord of Hosts ! " The 
battle-cry of Luther was in that hour the charging word of the 
English Puritans. 

Terrible ! but short as terrible ! Cromwell had seized the 
moment and the place. The hour and the man met there ; 
in overthrowing the one flank of the enemy's line, he made 
them the authors of their own defeat. A thick fog, too, had 
embarrassed their movements ; their very numbers became a 
source of confusion. But now over St. Abb's Head the sun 
suddenly appeared, crimsoning the sea, scattering the fogs 
away. The Scottish army were seen flying in all directions 
— flying, and so brief a fight ! " They run ! " said Cromwell ; 
" I protest they run ! " and catching inspiration, doubtless, 
from the bright shining of the daybeam, " Inspired," says Mr. 
Forster, " by the thought of a triumph so mighty and re- 
sistless, his voice was again heard, * Now let God arise, and 

LET His ENEMIES BE SCATTERED ! ' " 

It was a wonderful victory ; wonderful even among wonder- 
ful triumphs ! To hear the shout sent up by the united Eng- 
lish army ; to see the general make a halt, and sing the one 
hundred and seventeenth Psalm upon the field. Wonderful 
that that immense army should thus be scattered — 10,000 
prisoners taken, about 3000 slain, 200 colors, 15,000 stand of 
arms, and all the artillery ! — and that Cromwell should not 
have lost of his army twenty men ! 

It is veiy beautiful to notice the humanity of Cromwell. 
He had been indisposed to fight these men, for their faith was 
very near to his own. They had denounced his party and his 



CROMWELL AT D UNBAR. 125 

designs, as " sectaries," " malign ants," and yet had elevated 
the Prince of Malignants to a place of honor and authority 
over them and had sought to crush out all religious liberty by 
imposing their ecclesiastical polity upon England. This 
Oliver had attempted to resist by peaceable means, as best he 
could. He wrote (as his letters and the public documents 
bear testimony) in the spirit of a Christian, to the men whom 
he looked upon as Christian brethren. " I do beseech you 
in the bowels of Christ," he writes, " do believe that you may 
be mistaken ! " They persisted, we know, so they had to 
abide the consequences of, assuredly, a piece of illimitable 
folly ; and there was one Christian and Puritan army opposed 
to another. The sight was painful to Oliver. It is evident 
he would have avoided the battle-field but it could not be 
avoided. He was standing there for the invaded liberties of 
England ; and, however hostile to war the man was, the men 
who would build up the throne of Charles Stuart must under- 
stand that it was only with their own they had a right to med- 
dle. 

Hence he writes to General Leslie : 

" From the Camp at Pentland Hills, 
14th August, 1650. 

" Sir, — I received yours of the 13th instant, with the paper 
you mentioned therein enclosed, which I caused to be read in 
the presence of so many officers as could well be gotten to- 
gether, to which your trumpet can witness. We return you 
this answer ; by which I hope, in the Lord, it will appear that 
we continue the same we have professed ourselves to the 
honest people in Scotland; wishing to them as to our own 
souls ; it being no part of our business to hinder any of them 
from worshiping God in that way they are satisfied in their 
consciences by the word of God they ought, though differ- 
ent from us. 

"But that under the pretense of the Covenant, mistaken, 
and wrested from the most native intent and equity thereof, a 
king should be taken in by you to be imposed upon us ; and 
this be called ' the cause of God and the kingdom ; ' and this 
done upon ' the satisfaction of God's people in both nations,* 
as is alleged — together with a disowning of malignants, 
although he [Charles Stuart] who is the head of them, in 
which all their hope and comfort lies, be received ; who, at 
this very instant, hath a popish army fighting for and under 
him in Ireland ; hath Prince Rupert, a man who hath had his 



126 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

hand deep in the blood of many innocent men in England, 
now in the head of our ships, stolen from us on a malignant 
account ; hath the French and Irish ships daily making depre- 
dations on our coast ; and strong combinations by the malig- 
nants in England, to raise armies in our bowels, by virtue of 
his commissions, who hath of late issued out very many for 
that purpose ; — how the godly interest you pretend you have 
received him upon, and the malignant interests in their ends 
and consequences all centering in this man, can be secured, 
we can not discern. 

" And how we should believe, that while known and notori- 
ous malignants are fighting and plotting against us on the one 
hand, and you declaring for him on the other, it should not be 
an ' espousing of a malignant party's quarrel or interest ; ' but 
be a mere ' fighting upon former grounds and principles, and 
in the defense of the cause of God and the kingdoms,' as hath 
been these twelve years last past ; as you say ; how this 
should be for the security and satisfaction of God's people in 
both nations, or how the opposing of this should render us 
enemies to the godly with you, we can not well understand." 

These citations, and others which might be given, illustrate 
the pacific and upright dispositions, both in the mind of the 
general and the party he represented. And upon the field of 
battle, after Dunbar fight was over, his heart moved with pity 
to the helpless and hapless crowds crushed down in the death 
struggle ; he issued the following 

" Proclamation. 

" Forasmuch, as I understand there are several soldiers of 
the enemy's army yet abiding in the field, who by reason of 
their wounds could not march from thence : 

" These are therefore to give notice to the inhabitants o\ 
this nation, That they may have, and hereby have, free liberty 
to repair to the fields aforesaid : and, with their carts, or in any 
other peaceable wav, to carry away the said soldiers to such 
places as they shall'think fit :— provided they meddle not with 
or take away, any of the arms there. And all_ officers and 
soldiers are to take notice that the same is permitted. 

"Given under my hand, at Dunbar, 4th September, 1650. 

"Oliver Cromwell." 

The neighboring peasantry came with eight wagons, and 



CROMWELL A T DUNBAR. 1 27 

these mournful funeral trains retired in peace with their 
wretched burdens. 

It is also very beautiful to turn from the general to the 
husband, and to find on the morrow after the battle, while yet 
on the field, so tender a line as the following — so unaffected, 
no boasting, scarce an allusion to the difficulty or the deliver- 
ance, but a single gleam of affection playing forth from the 
heart of the strong man. 

''''For my beloved wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, at the Cockpit:* 
These. 

" Dunbar, 4th September, 1650. 

" My Dearest, — I have not leisure to write much. But I 
could chide thee that in many of thy letters thou writest to 
me, that I should not be unmindful of thee and thy little ones. 
Truly, if I love thee not too well, I think I err not on the 
other hand much. Thou art dearer to me than any other 
creature ; let that suffice. 

" The Lord hath showed us an exceeding mercy ; who can 
tell how it is ! My weak faith has been upheld. I have been 
in my inward man marvelously supported, though, I assure 
thee, I grow an old man, and feel infirmities of age marvel- 
ously creeping on me. Would my corruptions did as fast 
decrease ! Pray on my behalf in the latter respect. The par- 
ticulars of our late success Harry Vane or Gilbert Pickering 
will impart to thee. My love to all dear friends. I rest 
thine, 

" Oliver Cromwell." 

The letters on that 4th of September are various pious words 
hastily penned. Here are some of his words to Ireton in Ire- 
land : 

" I remember you at the throne of grace.- I heard of the 
Lord's good hand with you in reducing Waterford, Duncan- 
non, and Carlow : His name be praised. 

" We have been engaged upon a service fullest of trial ever 
poor creatures were upon. We made great professions of 
love, knowing we were to deal with many who were godly, 
and who pretended to be stumbled at our invasion. We were 
rejected again and again." 

* The Cock-pit was then and long afterward a sumptuous royal lodging in 
Whitehall ; Henry VIIL's place of cock-fighting. Cromwell's family removed 
thither, by vote of the Commons, during the Irish campaign. The present Privy 
Council office is built on ils site. 



128 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

By letters like these we are admitted into the most inner 
sanctuary of Cromwell's life ; and nowhere do we more clearly 
see its beauty. Beauty ! To many this term will seem 
strange, applied to this man ; but does not beauty ever dwell 
with strength ? — and tenderness, is it not the companion of 
pov;er ? The weak and luxurious Charles could not write 
such letters. It is very charming to find such fresh and 
beautiful feelings playing round and through the spirit of a 
man who was faded and worn down with the burden of over- 
whelming power, who had ascended to the very highest height 
of earthly authority. Here is another letter to his wife, bear- 
ing nearly the same date : 

" My Dearest, — I praise the Lord that I have increased in 
strength in my outward man ; but that will not satisfy me, 
except I get a heart to love and serve my heavenly Father 
better, and get more of the light of His countenance, which is 
better than life, and more power over my corruptions. In 
these hopes I wait, and am not without expectation of a 
gracious return. Pray for me ; truly I do daily for thee and 
the dear family ; and God Almighty bless you all with His 
spiritual blessings. 

" Mind poor Betty of the Lord's great mercy. Oh I desire 
her ncrt only to seek the Lord in her necessity, but in deed 
and in truth to turn to the Lord, and to keep close to Him, 
and to take heed of a departing heart, and of being cozened 
with worldly vanities, and worldly company, which I doubt 
she is too subject to. I earnestly and frequently pray for 
her, and for him. Truly they are dear to me, very dear ; and 
I am in fear lest Satan should deceive them, knowing how 
weak our hearts are, and how subtle the adversary is, and 
what way the deceitfulness of our hearts and the vain world 
make for his temptations. The Lord give them truth of heart 
to him. Let them take Him in truth, and they shall find 
Him. 

" My love to the dear little ones ; I pray for them. I thank 
them for their letters ; let me have them often. 

" Beware of my Lord Herbert's resort to your house. If 
he do so, it may occasion scandal, as if I were bargaining 
with him. Indeed, be wise ; you know my meaning. Mind 
Sir Harry Vane of the business of my estate ; Mr. Floyd 
knows my mind in that matter. 

*' If Dick Cromwell and his wife be with you, my dear love 
to them. I pray for them. They shall, God willing, hear 



CROMWELL AT DUNBAR. 129 

from me. I love them very dearly. Truly I am not able as 
yet to write much ; I am weary, and rest thine, 

. " Oliver Cromwell." 

We have also another short epistle sent to the same lady 
next month. . 

"My Dearest, — I could not satisfy myself to omit this 
post, although I have not much to write ; yet, indeed, I love to 
write to my dear, who is very much in my heart. It joys me 
to hear thy soul prospereth. The Lord increase His favors 
to thee more and more. The greatest good thy soul can wish 
is, that the Lord lift upon thee the light of His countenance, 
which is better than life. The Lord bless all thy good coun- 
sel and example to all those about thee, and hear thy prayers, 
and accept thee always. 

" I am glad to hear thy son and daughter are with thee. I 
hope thou wilt have some good opportunity of good advice to 
him. Present my duty to my mother, my love to all the fam- 
ily. Still pray for thine, 

" Oliver' Cromwell." 

Indeed, at this point in Cromwell's history, we might pause 
long, and notice many touches — traces of his love for the 
various members of his family. We might run back through 
the several past years of his life, and notice the combination 
of affection, piety, and purity developed in his correspon- 
dence. He never writes to his daughters without guiding 
them to the best life. He never writes to his son without an 
effort to lead him to the best thoughts and noblest actions, 
and this with no spirit of acrimony or sternness, but with real 
cheerfulness. This is very noticeable, among other things, 
the real kindliness of the man, the homeliness of his feelings, 
the play of sunny good-humor through his thoughts, and 
through his pen also. Here is a letter which it may be inter- 
esting to read : <- 

" For my beloved daughter^ Bridget Ireton, at Combury^ the 
GeneraVs Quarters: These. 

" London, 25th October, 1646. 
" Dear Daughter, — I write not to thy husband ; partly to 
avoid trouble, for one line of mine begets many of his, which 
I doubt makes him sit up too late ; partly because I am my- 
9 



130 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

self indisposed [/..?., not in the mood'\ at this time, having some 
other considerations. 

" Your friends at Ely are well ; 5-our sister Claypole is, I 
trust in mercy, exercised with some perplexed thoughts. She 
sees her own vanity and carnal mind — bewailing it. She 
seeks after (as I hope also) what will satisfy. And thus to be 
a seeker is to be one of the best sect next to a finder; a7id such a 
one shall ez^ery faithful humble seeker be at the end. Happy 
seeker, happy finder ! Who ever tasted that the Lord is gra- 
cious, without some sense of self, vanity, and badness ? Who 
ever tasted that graciousness of His, and could go less in 
desire [/>., because less desirous\ less pressing after full enjoy- 
ment ? Dear heart, press on ; let not thy husband, let not 
anything cool thy affections after Christ. I hope he \thy hus- 
band\ will be an occasion to inflame them. That which is 
best worthy of love in thy husband is that of the image of 
Christ he bears. Look on that, and love it best, and all the 
rest for that. I pray for thee and him ; do so for me. 

" My service and dear affections to the General and Gen- 
eraless. I hear she is very kind to thee ; it adds to all other 
obligations. I am, 

"Thy dear father, 

" Oliver Cromwell." 

"Delicacy of sentiment," says Dr. D'Aubignd, " the domes- 
tic virtues, and paternal love, are among the features by 
which Cromwell is best characterized." Here again is a 
letter to one of his daughters, when the writer was on board 
the John, on his expedition to Ireland : 

" My Dear Daughter,- — Your letter was very welcome to 
me. I like to see anything from your hand ; because, indeed, 
I stick not to say I do entirely love you. And, therefore, I 
hope a word of advice will not be unwelcome nor unaccept- 
able to thee. 

" I desire you both to make it, above all things, your busi- 
ness to seek the Lord ; to be frequently calling upon Him 
that He would manifest Himself to you in His Son ; and be 
listening what returns He makes to you, for He will be speak- 
ing in your ear and your heart if you attend thereunto. I 
desire you to provoke your husband thereunto. As for the 
pleasure of this life, and outward business, let that be upon 
the bye. Be above all these things by faith in Christ, and 
then you shall have the true use and comfort of them, and 



CROMWELL A T DUNBAR 131 

not otherwise. I have much satisfaction in hope your spirit 
is this way set ; and I desire you may grow in grace and in 
the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and that 
I may hear thereof. The Lord is very near, which we see 
by His wonderful works , and, therefore, He looks that we of 
this gefleration draw near to Him. This lale great mercy of 
Ireland is a great manifestation thereof ; your husband will 
acquaint you with it. We should be much stirred up in our 
spirits to thankfulness. We much need the spirit of Christ 
to enable us to "praise God for so admirable a mercy. 
"The Lord bless thee, my dear daughter ! 

" I rest, thy loving father, 

" Oliver Cromwell." 

These, then, are the letters of this man (in the which we 
have been drawn away by the letter to his wife after Dunbar, 
and have a little confused dates), and he has been regarded 
as a kind of ogre by all historians ! These are the letters of 
the warrior *, do they not reveal the Christian .'' Do they not 
show a character strong in its simplicity, as we have beheld it 
before — strong in its mailed armor of proof and in its sagac- 
ity? Cromwell had been judged from a wrong center. 
Could a kid-skinned time-server like Clarendon understand 
him ? Could a skeptic like Hume understand him ? Could 
a prejudiced partisan like Forster understand him ? Let the 
reader, at this point of Cromwell's histor}', look at the great 
Maccabaeus of the commonwealth, and let him glance at the 
circumstances of the history too, and the times. What would 
have been the state of the land had there been no Cromwell ; 
or had Cromwell been killed on the field of Dunbar or Wor- 
cester ? — for with the battle of Worcester, which we are pres- 
ently to recite, terminated the Second Civil War. Charles 
II. fled in hopeless desolation to France, to exist as the pen- 
sioned pauper of the French king. The royal power was 
now fairly beaten down in England. Let the malignant 
sneerer, who has no words but commonplace abuse to bestow 
upon the great English hero, attempt to realize what the land 
would have been, must have been, without him, rent In fac- 
tions, almost all equally strong. An army then without a 
leader, dreamy speculators determined to impose their 
theories upon the kingdom, and so inflict upon the land the 
miseries of anarchy, as in the French Revolution ; or the 
horrors of persecution, as in Boston and the New England 
States. Cromwell was the power raised up by Providence to 



Ija OLIVER CROMWELL. 

save England from this. Never in the history of the world 
had a man a more difficult task to perform ; but he performed 
it, becausfc iie brought to the task, in addition to the most 
remarkable combination of mental requisites ever assembled 
together in one man-=^forming a sort of mythic personage, 
and reminding us of Theseus or Hercules — ^in addition to 
these, we say, he brought piety of the sublimest order, and 
singleness of purpose lofty as that of a Hebrew prophet, but 
conjoined to a largeness of toleration for all religious differ- 
ences, for which we know not where to find a parallel. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CROMWELL AT WORCESTER, AND THE ROMANCE OF BOSCOBEL. 

Whoever advised Charles, the young king of Scots, after 
the battle of Dunbar and the entire conquest of the Presby- 
terian cause by Cromwell, to invade England, had but little 
ability to read in the book of passing events. There was 
surely little to encourage such an attempt in the history of 
what had recently been achieved, in the character of Crom- 
well, or in the determmation of the English people ; probably 
the most encouraging circumstance was, that immediately 
after the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell was struck down by a 
serious and protracted illness. The young king came across 
the Border, reached Lancashire, in spite of very sorry success, 
apparently in hopeful and buoyant spirits. He had passed 
by Kendal and Preston to Warrington, there he received a 
check from Harrison and Lambert ; he forced on* his way, 
called on Shrewsbury, in passing, to surrender, but without 
effect. He then pushed on to Worcester. The city opened 
its gates and received the king and his army with every dem- 
onstration of affection, "they provided for their many and 
grievous wants, and the mayor and aldermen, with all the 
solemnity and circumstance they -could command, attended 
the Herald who proclaimed Charles king of England, Scot- 
land, France, and Ireland. Vain and empty boastfulness ! 
But there was a stir of terror in England ; London especially 
gave way to fearful alarms. , A measure of success, and 
Charles and the army, which had pushed on from Scotland 
so far into one of the chief midland cities of England, would 
speedily be before the metropolis ; and Cromwell and his 



CROMWELL AT WORCESTER. I33 

strong men were away. Even lion-hearted Bradshaw was in 
fear. How was it that Cromwell had permitted this strange 
stride to be taken by the young man and his foolish advisers ? 
The fidelity of Cromwell was suspected ; a universal panic of 
fear was spreading on every hand. It is quite noticeable how, 
as in this instance, writers like Mrs. Hutchinson, who never 
miss their opportunity of uttering their bitterness or their sus- 
picions concerning Cromwell, are as full of alarm when he is 
absent from the spot which his genius alone could save. In 
this case there was little need for their fear ; even while they 
were in their panic of wonder Cromwell had already saved 
them. He came on with a tremendous army, nearly three 
times as large as that which had conquered at Dunbar. 

With nearly 30,000 men, on the 28th of August, 165 1, he 
reached Worcester, and had all of his regiments in position 
within two miles of the city. As to the condition of the royal 
army, hope and confidence appear to have made thern so pre- 
sumptuous that their chief officers could not abstain from 
some internal dissensions. " There was no good understand- 
ing," says Clarendon, " between the officers of the army." 
The army was mostly composed of Scots ; and yet, by Clar- 
endon's testimony, there was a proposal to supersede old 
David Leslie in the command, and Buckingham, by the same 
authority, appears to have been desirous that the honor of the 
chief command should be conferred upon himself, urging that 
as it was unreasonable, while they were in Scotland, to put 
any other in command over Leslie, so now it was unreasona- 
ble, while they were in England, and hoped to increase the 
army by the access of the English, upon whom their principal 
dependence would be, to expect they would be willing to 
serve under Leslie ; and it would not consist with the honor 
of any peer of England to receive his orders. Charles was 
surprised, and urged against the duke his youth ; the duke, 
with sufficient self-confidence, urged again, that Henry IV. of 
France had won a great battle when he was younger. The 
king, however, refused to listen to the counsels of his ill-advis- 
er, and the duke did not recover from his ill humor while the 
army remained in Worcester. The army itself, which in truth 
must have been a strange array of ragged regiments, felt corn- 
fortable ; they liked their quarters, and did not desire to quit 
them till they should be thoroughly refreshed. They were not 
desirous of marching further on ; Worcester was a good post, 
standing in a fertile region in the very heart of the kingdom ; 
and if Cromwell must be met, it appears to have been gen- 



134 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

erally thought it would be better to meet him there. So 
Charles abandoned his first intention to proceed on to Lon- 
don, and every effort was made to strengthen the position by 
repairing the breaches of the walls, and throwing up forts ; 
and it is impossible to resist the impression that there was a 
generally diffused faith that, in this place the tide of conflict 
and conquest was to turn, and now " the king would enjoy 
his own again." 

Even yet they did not know the man who was marching 
upon them, they did not understand as yet the shrewdness of 
that eye, and the resources of that brain. The battle of Wor- 
cester, it will be seen at once, differs from any of the other 
great battles which Cromwell fought, and where his genius 
rose victorious. Marston and Naseby, and even Dunbar, were 
on the open plain ; but Worcester was a city in possession, 
and the Royalists no doubt expected, from the security of their 
position, a protracted siege. Worcester stands, as the reader 
knows, on the right bank of the Severn, and something had 
been done by the Royalists to increase its means of resistance. 
Cromwell, of course, found all the bridges broken down and 
destroyed ; not a boat or punt was to be seen, while, appar- 
ently securely fortified, there on the opposite side were seen 
the heights of the beautiful old city, not less strong than beau- 
tiful. Even Clarendon seems scarcely able to repress his feel- 
ings of admiration, as he says, " Cromv;ell, without troubling 
himself with the formality of a siege, marched directly on as 
to a prey, and possessed himself at once of the hill and all the 
other places of advantage with very little opposition." How 
did he perform this feat ? It may ht supposed he knew what 
he would do before he arrived on the scene of action. While 
the Royalists felt their security from the broad river of the 
Severn, and the narrower river of the little Teme, the great 
general had no sooner arrived tban he proceeded at once to 
throw his army astride across the two rivers by means of pon- 
toons ; then he laid a bridge across the Teme close to its junc- 
tion with the Severn. He used no delay, none of the circum- 
spection which it was supposed he would so naturally and 
necessarily employ. He soon forced his way through the 
surprised and weak defenders against the ingress, as the troops 
landed by the bridges ; and in fact, the battle of Worcester 
may be said to have been fought in Worcester streets. Crom- 
well himself soon seized upon the guns of what was called the 
royal fort, and played them upon the fugitives. The battle 
raged all round, at every point, although it appears to have 



CROMWELL AT WORCESTER. 135 

been decided under the walls of the town. There Cromwell, 
with his own Ironsides around him, held the conflict for three 
hours, "as stiff a contest," he wrote afterward, "for many 
hours, including both sides of the river, as he had ever seen." 
Some attempts had been made to show that Charles acquitted 
himself with extraordinary bravery on this occasion ; the effort 
is not successful, the description of the king's heroism at the 
battle of Worcester has no clear foundation. It is more prob- 
able that he looked down upon the rout of battle from the 
Cathedral tower ; and at last, seeing all hope gone and all 
courage lost, he cried out, " I had rather that you would shoot 
me than keep me alive to seethe sad consequences of this fatal 
day." The army was cut to pieces, most of the great generals 
and leaders were taken prisoners, the streets were filled with 
the bodies of horses and men. By six in the evening Charles 
had fled through St. Martin's gate. Just outside the town he 
tried to rally his men ; but it was to no purpose, Worcester lay 
behind him, its houses pillaged, its citizens slain for his sake, 
and he forced to fly for his life. And who could have 
expected any other ending ? A boy like Charles, with such an 
army, a handful of men badly supplied with ammunition, the 
leaders of the army quarreling among themselves ; and these 
before a veteran like Cromwell, with all England at his back. 
The bravery and devotedness of the men who followed Charles 
may command respect, and shed some luster over what must be 
regarded as a worthless cause, but that is all. So Charles fled 
through the streets in piteous despair on the evening of that 
third of September, Cromwell's fortunate day, the anniversary 
of the battle of Dunbar. At ten o'clock at night he sat down, 
as he says, weary and scarcely able to write ; yet he wrote to 
the Parliament of England : " The dimensions of this mercy 
are above my thoughts, it is for aught I know a crowning 
mercy." They still remember that day in Worcester, and still 
point out many of the places connected with the story of the 
battle : and in Perry Wood, where Cromwell first took up his 
position, there is a tree, which the peasant shows to those who 
desire to see it, where the devil, Cromwell's intimate friend, 
appeared to him and gave him the promise of victory. The 
railway indeed runs over the ground where the hottest engage- 
ment took place ; Sidbury and St. Martin's have disappeared, 
and large lime trees grow on the site of the Royal Fort, where 
the Royalist guns were seized by Cromwell and turned upon 
the Royalist army ; butthe rooms are still shown where Charles 
slept, and where the Duke of Hamilton, who was wounded in 



136 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

the action, died. Powick old bridge, which occupies a con- 
spicuous place in the story of the battle, still stands crooked 
and narrow, spanning with massive arches and abutments the 
famous streams of the Teme and Laughern. Perhaps the most 
curious item memorializing the famous conflict is in the 
corporation records, with reference to the poor Scotch soldiers ; 
" Paid for pitch and rosin to perfume the Hall after the Scots, 
two shillings." Indeed, that fine old Hall needed perfuming 
and cleansing, for it was drenched with blood, but rather the 
blood of the English than the Scotch ; for it was within its 
walls that the EngUsh Cavaliers made a last and desperate 
resistance, and they were all cut to pieces or made prisoners. 
This was the last and great decisive conflict ; the defeat of 
Worcester settled the Royal cause, and doomed it, with its 
chief and his adherents, to banishment, until the strong victor 
who had scattered the royal rabble at Worcester, should him- 
self be conquered by death. 

And here, before we pass on with the stream of circumstance 
in Cromwell's life, shall we turn for a few moments to the 
singular episode of the strange adventures of the Royal fugitive 
Charles, after the battle of Worcester ? We may well do so 
if we are disposed to accept the words of Clarendon, who says, 
" It is a great pity that there was never a journal made of 
that miraculous deliverance, in which there might be seen so 
many visible impressions of the immediate hand of God ! *' 
But this language is quite a modest estimate compared with 
what is said by Mistress Wyndham, the wife or sister of Col- 
onel Wyndham, who took a considerable share in the preser- 
vation of the king ; this lady says, " It is a story in which the 
constellations of Providence are so refulgent, that their light 
is sufficient to confute all the atheists in the world, and to en- 
force all persons whose faculties are not pertinaciously de- 
praved to acknowledge the watchful eye of God from above, 
looking upon all actions of men here below, making even the 
most wicked subservient to His just and glorious designs. 
For the Almighty so closely covered the king with the wing 
of His protection, and so clouded the understandings of his 
cruel enemies, that the most piercing eye of malice could not 
see, nor the most barbarous bloody hand offer violence to, his 
sacred person, God smiting his pursuers as once he did the 
Sodomites, with blindness." The language of Mistress Wynd- 
ham is certainly pitched in an exalted key, but the story is as 
certainly very remarkable, A story is told, how many years 
since, before the age of railways, a nobleman and his lady, 



CROMWELL AT WORCESTER. 



m 



with their infant child, traveling in a wild neighborhood, were 
overtaken by a snowstorm and compelled to seek shelter in a 
rude shepherd's hut ; when the nurse, who was in attendance 
upon her lord and lady, began undressing the infant by the 
side of the warm fire, the inhabitants of the hut gazed in awe 
and silence at the process. As the little one was disrobed of 
its silken frock and fine linen, and rich dress after dress was 
taken away, still the shepherd and his wife gazed with awe, 
until, when the process of undressing was completed, and the 
naked baby was being washed and warmed by the fire, when 
all the wrappages and outer husks were peeled off, the shep- 
herd and his wife exclaimed, " Why, it's just like one of ours ! " 
But it is a very difficult thing to understand that kings and 
queens and princes are just like one of us when their state 
robes are off ; and thus the adventures of Charles derive their 
interest and sanctity from the supposed importance of the per- 
son, and the worship with which he is regarded arises from 
the sense of the place he fills, and his essential importance 
to the future schemes of Almighty Providence. And still 
it certainly is one of the most interesting pieces of English 
folklore. It has been said, but we a little doubt the truth 
of the saying, that there is no country where, in so small a 
space as in England, so much and so many relics of the 
past are crowded togethei* ; and it is further often said, 
that of all romantic tales in English history, that of King 
Charles's flight is the most so. Hairbreadth escapes, suf- 
ferings, surprises, and disguises shed quite a fictitious halo 
around one who was, after all, a very mean and common- 
'Ijlace character. The adventures of Charles, however, are 
indeed full of interest, and the volume of Boscobel Tracts 
is a charming story of old halls, many of them now gone, 
many of them still standing, gray and weather-worn, full of 
hiding-places, where the prince found a refuge. The escape 
of Charles is one of those stories which the English peasant 
has in many parts of England told pleasantly in kis own rude 
way. It is a wonderful story of human fidelity, for though a 
thousand pounds was set upon the capture of Charles, and 
perhaps more than a score of people knew the route he was 
taking, not one of them ever revealed it, not one of them 
broke faith, peasant and peer were equally true ; cottage and 
hall were equally open to the royal fugitive ; indeed, it is a 
story which if told of a better man might bring tears into the 
eyes. From that fatal evening, when flying along from Wor- 
cester he threw his blue ribbon and garter and princely oma- 



13$ OLIVER CROMWELL. 

ments away, when his long black hair was cropped off country 
fashion, when he climbed up into the Boscobel oak, and amid 
its thick boughs could look down, and peep, and see the red 
coats of his enemies passing beneath them, till 

" When all the paths were dim, 

And far below the Roundhead rode 
And hummed a surly hymn," 

until, by a strangely circuitous route, he reached Brighthelm- 
stone, or Brighton, and from thence embarked in Captain 
Tattersal's little vessel from Shoreham,* it is a constant suc- 
cession of adventures which from that day to this have fur- 
nished subjects for the writers of fiction. Lord Clarendon 
devotes a good many pages to a story of these adventures ; 
but he gives no honor to the humble agents who secured the 
king's escape : the Penderels, for instance, to whom the king 
expressed so much gratitude, they are unmentioned ; nor 
does the faithful Jane Lane receive the notice she deser\xs ; 
quite worthy she appears of all the fame which has waited 
upon Flora Macdonald, who took a similar part in rescuing a 
later member of the house of Stuart from similar dangers. 
There is a quiet and unassuming grace about Jane Lane 
which gives a real charm to her character. The way was 
beset with stories ; and it must have been an anxious time to 
Charles. But some of his retreats, standing still, glow with 
the lights of the old romantic days : the old house at Trent, 
for instance, in whose secret chambers he stayed so long, and 
from whence he heard a Roundhead soldier boasting that he 
had slain the king with his own hands, and from whence he 
could see the bonfires the people kindled in their joy, and 
hear his own death knell rung from the old church tower. 
Sometimes the king was " Will Jones," a woodman ; then he 
was changed into " Will Jackson," a groom, clad in gray 
cloth. Once he had to take Jane Lane's horse to a smithy, it 
had cast a shoe, and the smith began wailing the non-capture 
of that rogue Charles Stuart, and the king chimed him in, 

* In reference to this a ballad, by the present writer, called a Farewell to Brighton 
Bells ^ sings : 

" Again the old bells clang'd and clash'd to greet the merry day, 
When scapegrace Charles came back again, that twenty-ninth of May} 
And in the Old King's Head a group of merry fishers chat. 
Whilst pointing to the chair in which, disguised, the monarch sat ! 
And many a tale that night was told,— the tankard's power prevail'd, — 
How, but for Brighton's loyalty, e'en Boscobel had fail'd ; 
I doubt me much that Brighton ale display'd a tyrant's power, 
In drbking bold Dick Tattersal, the hero of the hour I " 




CROMWELL AT WORCESTER, 139 

that if that rogue could only be taken, he deserved hanging 
more than all the rest, for bringing in the Scots. Once 
close to Stratford, " Will Jackson," in pursuance of his dis- 
guise, was sent into the kitchen, where the cookmaid, who 
was providing supper, desired him to wind up the jacjk ; 
he was obedient, but he did not do it in the right way, which 
led the maid in some passion to ask, " What countryman are 
you, that you know not how to wind up a jack?" "Will 
Jackson," appears to have answered very satisfactorily : " I 
am a poor tenant's son of Colonel Lane, in Staffordshire ; we 
seldom have roast meat, and when we have, we don't make 
use of a jack," and so the maid's anger was appeased. That 
old jack is still hanging up beside the fire-place, but those 
who have seen it within the last few years say that it would 
now puzzle a wiser man than Charles to wind it up. Another 
story tells how the king was hard pressed by soldiers in pur- 
suit of him, and how they sought for him all over the house, 
and in the kitchen too ; but here the girl in the kitchen knew 
him, for indeed he was there, and as they entered he looked 
with trepidation round him, perhaps giving up all for lost, 
now ; but the cook hit him a smart rap with the basting ladle 
exclaiming, " Now, then, go on with thy work ; what art thou 
looking about for ? " And the maneuver was effectual, and 
the soldiers started on another track. The wanderings seem 
to have been long, nor was it until Wednesday, October 15 th, 
the same day on which the gallant Lord Derby laid his head 
upon the scaffold at Bolton, in Lancashire, and probably 
about the same time in the day, that the king was able to 
set sail for the coast of Normandy. The language of Lord 
Clarendon concerning the adventures and ultimate restora- 
tion of the king reads so like a piece of mere grim satire 
that we can not but pause for a moment to quote them here : 
" We may tell those desperate wretches, who yet harbor in 
their thoughts wicked designs against the sacred person of the 
king, in order to the compassing of their own imaginations, 
that God Almighty would not have led him through so many 
wildernesses of afflictions of all kinds, conducted him through 
so many perils by sea, and perils by land, snatched him out of 
the midst of this kingdon when it was not worthy of him, and 
when the hands of his enemies were even upon him, when 
they thought themselves so sure of him that they would bid so 
cheap and so vile a price for him ; He would not in that arti- 
cle have so covered him with a cloud, that he traveled even 
with some pleasure and great observation through the midst 



140 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

of his enemies : He would not so wonderfully have new mod- 
eled that army ; so inspired their hearts, and the hearts of 
the whole nation, with an honest and impatient longing for 
the return of their dear sovereign, and in the mean time have 
exercised him (which had little less of Providence in it than 
the other) with those unnatural, or at least unusual, disre- 
spects and reproaches abroad, that he might have a harmless 
and an innocent appetite to his own country, and return to 
his own people, with a full value, and the whole unwasted bulk 
of his affections, without being corrupted and biased by ex- 
traordinary foreign obligations ; God Almighty would not have 
done all this but for a servant whom He will always preserve 
as the apple of His eye, and always defend from the most 
secret machinations of his enemies." 

When the king came back, shall we say that it was to his 
honor that he remembered with gratitude the services of Jane 
Lane — by that time Lady Fisher — and the Penderels? It 
would have been an addition to his perpetual dishonor had he 
forgotten them, had not sought them out with the intention 
to distinguish them. He even settled a sum upon them in 
acknowledgment of their services and fidelity to him ; but 
these promises appear in a short time to have failed in fulfill- 
ment. But the interviews they had with the king in London 
are interesting. Charles wrote a very handsome letter to Lady 
Fisher, before the Restoration, full of respect and gratitude, 
and signing himself, " Your most assured and constant friend." 
Richard Penderel, Charles introduced to his Court saying, 
" The simplest rustic who serves his sovereign in the time of 
need to the utmost extent of his ability, is as deserving of our 
commendation as the victorious leader of thousands. Friend 
Richard," continued the king, " I am glad to see thee ; thou 
wert my preserver and conductor, the the bright star that 
showed me to my Bethlehem, for which kindness I will 
engrave thy memory on the tablet of a faithful heart." Turn- 
ing to the lords the king said, " My lords, I pray you respect 
this good man for my sake. Master Richard, be bold and tell 
these lords what passed among us when I had quitted the oak 
at Boscobel to reach Pit Leason." Altogether the king — 
who is assuredly no favorite with this present writer, who^also 
much wonders at the Providence which saved him, if he~may 
say it without irreverence, when so many better men fell as sac- 
rifices to the passion, the caprice, or the indignation of the 
hour — may be more favorably viewed in his adventures through 
those old villages, ancient halls, and wayside inns, and in his 



^^^^^c/ 



CROMWELL THE USURPER. 141 



dealings with the humble attendants who risked for him their 
lives in their obscure service, than in any other of the inci- 
dents and chapters of his discreditable career. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CROMWELL THE USURPER, 

Passing over much else, there is one circumstance and scene 
in the life of Cromwell which has ever been surrounded with 
difficulty, his great act of usurpation when he assumed the 
power. We suppose that scene is one of the most memorable 
of any ; it is written upon our recollection from our early read- 
ing. The Long Parliament is associated with much that is 
most illustrious in the annals of those days ; but we must 
remember that those achievements were associated with its 
very early annals. When Cromwell laid his hand so rudely 
on the symbols of power, Pym and Hampden were dead, and 
many besides, who, although less known, had given effect to 
its administrative character. The talk then held about the 
settlement of Government, the unending source of intermina- 
ble talk, had degenerated into a mere republican jangle. Wild 
theories were woven through the foggy archways of dreamy 
brains. Say what we will of that Long Parliament, it had 
exercised lately little power in governing the nation ; a noisy, 
garrulous, chattering, self-opinionated old Parliament. Henry 
Hallam, whose witness is so true that from his verdict there 
is seldom any appeal, has said, " It may be said, I think, 
with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three 
public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few 
of political wisdom and courage, are recorded of them, from 
their quarrel with the king to their expulsion by CromWell." 
This is always necessary to be borne in mind. The memories 
of many readers are so confused in the supposition that the 
Long Parliament which Cromwell so rudely scattered was the 
same House which, in the earlier years of its history, had 
achieved for the country services so remarkable. Indeed, it 
was the same House, but how different. Its greatest spirits, 
as we have seen, were departed : Pym was dead, Hampden 
was dead. Cromwell, as he looked along its benches, would 
notice many a place vacated where once sat some strong friend 
of order and of freedom. It had so shrunken from honor 



X42 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

that it had cbme to be called " the Rump," and reminds us of 
Sheridan's description of a ministry in his day, of which only 
one faithful member was left, " that all the honorable parts 
had vanished, and only left the sitting member behind." It 
is true there were great and honorable names, but these also 
were associated with the most wild and fantastic dreams and 
schemes. Then, if the reader should desire to approve the 
present writer's justice, let him turn to review the various 
questions which, while most urgent and weighty matters were 
pressing, this " Rump " devoted its time to discuss. Not indis- 
posed itself to enter upon the work of persecution, it became 
unpopular throughout the land ; it was attacked by all parties ; 
it was urged even to dissolve itself. This, it persistently de- 
termined not to do ; and while accomplishing nothing for Gov- 
ernment or for the people, on the twentieth of April, 1653, 
while Cromwell was quietly sitting in his own " lodgings^" in 
Whitehall, there was brought to him a message, tha{ at that 
very moment a Bill was being hurried through the House, by 
which this most comely piece of Government was resolving 
its own indefectible perpetuity, and thus attempting a great 
act of usurpation. Let the reader, therefore, distinctly under- 
stand that it was the usurpation of capability against incapa- 
bility ; the House must be checkmated. Cromwell therefore 
immediately gathered his officers round him, and walked down 
to the assembly. 

Moments there assuredly are when the destiny of the nation 
hangs on one strong and supremely capable man ; when a 
nation can no more be saved, than a universe can be governed, 
by a Committee of Ways and Means, Committees are a fine 
expedient — a parliament is only a large national committee 
or club — but in moments of great exigency and danger a 
chief \s wanted. Looking through all England at that mo- 
ment, we can not find another man who could have been the 
great leader. Look round upon their ranks. There are men 
fiery in battle, and there are men with the clear and calm 
mind ; but England needed at that time a man of prompt 
and decisive instinct, and in Cromwell we behold such a man. 
He could not have written the " Monarchy of Man " with Sir 
John Eliot, nor the " Science of Government " of Algernon 
Sydney, nor the " Meditations " of Sir Harry Vane. But these 
men saw only in a straight line ; they saw only their own idea ; 
they were content to become — they all did become — martyrs 
to their idea. Cromwell's eye swept the horizon, and he saw 
that England wanted equitable government, the rule of justice. 



CROMWELL THE USURPER. 143 

He ruled not by the Presbyterian or the RepubHcan or the 
Independent theory of justice. He instinctively apprehended 
the wants of men ; and hence, while he was, no doubt, in 
many directions hated — and perhaps few felt that his views 
exactly squared with theirs — all were compelled to feel that 
he alone was able to hold the restive horses along the dizzy 
and difficult crag; he alone was able to govern without a 
theory, and therefore justly. 

It is something striking to contrast the two men going down 
to the same House. Charles was a king, and he went to arrest 
the members and to assert that there was no law in England 
save his will ; but he went as king Nomi7iaL Cromwell went 
with no royalty about him, yet he went as king Real ; and he, 
too, went for the still more amazing purpose of daring that 
whole House, and turning it out into the streets. The intelli- 
gence which we have seen reached him that morning certainly 
might well fill him with alarm. It was the news of what would, 
if carried out, materially increase the difficulties of his position ; 
and he determined on the venture. Therefore in his plain suit of 
black, with his gray worsted stockings, he went down to the 
House, and took his ordinary seat. But why do we describe 
the scene which has been described so often } How restlessly 
he sat there. How he essayed several times to rise, and sunk 
back again upon his seat. How,, at last, as the motion was 
about to be put, he sprang from his place, threw off his hat, 
and began to speak ; and how he began to speak in commen- 
dation of the Parliament ; then launched out in condemnation 
of their sins ; then, with most memorable words, took the 
Speaker from the chair, turned the members out, threw away 
the mace, emptied the celebrated chamber, locked the door, 
and walked away with the key in his pocket ! 

The inarticulateness of Cromwell has been commented upon. 
He speaks, but you can not fathom ail his meaning. Is not 
this the surest type and token of the master-man, be he states- 
man, or any kmd of man ? Not even to himself surely was all 
his meaning revealed ; how could it be to those to whom he 
spoke 1 Even to all the mightiest souls does thought lie deeper 
far than any speech. In all his words there is the heavy roll 
of a deep sea ; but this, when the fit of inspiration was upon 
him, was especially the case. Then, while the bright forks of 
lightning pierced far and deep through his words, he yet used 
many which were unintelligible to those to whom he spoke. 
It seems as though he could not always see, at the moment, 
what he was saying, but worked out his meaning into action 



144 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

through his speech. Nothin^has been more commented upon 
than the reserve of Cromwell, as certain slanderers choose to 
call it, his " hypocrisy." Of course there was reserve ; secre- 
tiveness, if the reader will ; a poor statesman he if he have 
not this. Test of all power to command is the possibility of 
intellectual reserve in combination with moral sympathy. A 
famous instance of that we have in an interview with Ludlow ; 
a memorable afternoon. It was after there had been held a 
Council of State, and Cromwell whispered him that he wished 
to speak to him. Cromwell was just on his way to Scotland, 
to that sublime campaign of his in which occurred the grand 
episode of Dunbar. He took Ludlow into the queen's guard- 
room, and there he talked to him some time, denouncing the 
tortuous jungle of English law ; speaking of the great provi- 
dences of God in England, and what might be done by a good 
brave man. In particular, he talked in a most unintelligible 
manner of the iioth Psalm. It is not so unintelligible to us 
now. 

And we think this is the moment to say a few words upon 
that other ever difficult problem : What were Cromwell's inten- 
tions with reference to himself and to Charles ? We can not 
see that there is foundation for any other thought than that 
Cromwell especially intended to preserve English law ; and to 
him, we dare say, a king was not more sacred than a man, and 
a lawless king not so sacred as an obedient and law-keeping 
man. Yet we see no reason to think that he was beckoned on 
by any shades of unlawful ambition, nor do we see any reason 
to doubt that he did at one time fully intend to save the king. 
There is an important principle, to which we have already 
alluded, in Guizot's story of the English Commonwealth, which 
we believe to be substantially sound and just — namely, " That 
God does not grant to great men, who have set on disorder the 
foundations of their greatness, the power to regulate at their 
pleasure a^nd for centuries, even according to their better de- 
sires, the government of nations." This is true' substantially. 
But it is also true that Charles had really set on disorder the 
foundations of his greatness. The race of men who first con- 
fronted Charles — Eliot, Pym, and Hampden especially — ^were 
men of law ; they no doubt desired to see the government set- 
tled in a constitutional manner. We do not believe that those 
first actors were republicans. Certainly not in the sense in 
which John Milton, Sir Harry Vane, Algernon Sydney, and 
Harrington were republicans. To them the great thing that 
England wanted was good, just, equitable law ; they were men 



CROMWELL THE USURPER. 145 

who would have made some such arrangement as that which 
was actually made when William III. ascended the throne. 
The king threw all this desir^nto a hopeless imbroglio. The 
raising of his banner, and the subsequent civil war created a 
hopeless anarchy. Cromwell, although he had some education 
for the law, and was originally intended for the legal profes- 
sion, had little of the lawyer in his nature. Casuistries and 
subtleties enough might spin their cobwebs through his brain, 
but they were not such as lawyers love, in catches and in 
technicalities. He had, we believe, a strong love of English 
justice. He had, we believe, a resolute desire to see things 
established by law. Does any one suppose that had power and 
ambition been his mark, he might not have achieved it in a far 
readier way than by that sophistical and doubtful Protectorate 1 
If the king would have allowed himself to be saved — if, we 
say, he could have been honest — Cromwell would have served 
him and saved him. And had he not prized the happiness of 
his daughter too highly, what was to prevent his acceptance of 
the offer of Charles Stuart, the exile, in which case the name 
of Cromwell might have been associated with the royal line of 
kings ? But we think little of these things. Can we think 
that the man who struck down the majesty of England at 
Marston and Naseby, who laid Ireland groaning at his feet, and 
crushed even the haughty Presbyterian at Dunbar, can we sup- 
pose that any feelings of fear restrained him from decking his 
brows with the round of sovereignty ? That the idea of mon- 
archy came to him again and again we can well believe. But 
we can believe also, and do believe, that nothing but the purity 
of his own purposes restrained his hand from grasping the 
crown. Be sure of this, no fantastic republican was he. He 
knew the mind of England too well. He knew human nature 
too well. He knew history too well ; for let us not forget that 
he had received the education of a scholar and a gentleman, 
and scholars admired his magnificent and well-selected library 
in a day when the collection of books was not a fashion. But 
having conquered Charles, he saw, of course, that power and 
responsibility must reside somewhere, and in some person. 
Where ? In that House whom he retained in -existence, whose 
greatest spirits were all dead, or, if remaining there, with their 
theories of impracticable governments, framed on Grecian 
models or Italian oligarchies, surrounding their whole concep- 
tio'ns with a mist and a haze ? What that Long Parliament 
was fitted to be we see by what it was when he appeared in its 
midst, and by what he did when once more it assembled, and 
10 



146 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

laid England under so damnable and disgraceful a tyranny that 
every nerve in English flesh thrills with pain and shame when 
we think that our land has known such atrocious and iniquitous 
misrule. Cromwell, we believe, all along used the circum- 
stances as they transpired as best he could. What would we 
have had him do 1 When the king was conquered, would we 
have had him place the conquered tyrant once more upon the 
throne, without any promise or constitution ? We have seen 
that there was no reliance on his faith ; yet there are those who 
have ever a good word for him. But he could not be true, he 
could not be sincere. " I wonder you don't leave off this 
abominable custom of lying, George," said Lord Muskerry to^ 
the celebrated George Rooke, when they were sailing together. 
" I can't help it," said George. " Pooh ! pooh ! " said his 
lordship ; " it may be done by degrees. Suppose you were to 
begin by uttering one truth a day ! " If Charles had only told 
the truth "^7 degrees^'' had he been sincere only now and 
then, he might have been saved ! He signed the death-warrant 
of his best friend and strongest servant, Lord Strafford, after 
he had most faithfully pledged that he would rather lose his 
crown than perform such an act of unfealty, and ^'' on the word 
of a king^' became a proverb and byword from that circum- 
stance through all ages. Then came the revelations of the let- 
ters seized on the field of Naseby. Then, when the king was 
in the power of the Parliament, Cromwell desired to save him, 
and Cromwell was willing to do so. The king had appealed to 
him, in his despair, from the Isle of Wight ; and the letters, in 
the saddle-bags of the king's private messenger, to the queen 
in France, seized at the Blue Boar, in Holburn, revealed the 
king as sa)dng of Cromwell, whose hand was graciously, at its 
own peril, attempting to save him, " He thinks that I may 
confer upon him the Garter and Star, but I shall know, in 
good time, how to fit his neck to a halter f^ Even Mrs. 
Hutchinson, no friend to Cromwell, confessedher belief in the 
faithfulness of his desire to save the king, a desire defeated by 
the king's own unfaithfulness. 

Charles the First disposed of — what then ? Charles Stuart 
the Second, should he place him on the throne ? No ; we 
may well believe this child of light had no fellowship with 
that Belial. The House was composed only of about seventy 
members. They were passing an Act that they would not be 
dissolved but by their own consent. They would by that Act 
have been sitting there now ! Cromwell would not trust that 
weakness. He had also, we believe, no great regard for his 



CROMWELL THE USURPER. 147 

own head ; still, we dare say, he thought it fitted its own neck 
very well, and he determined to do his best to keep it there. 
On the whole he saw, we believe, that the people must return 
to their ancient monarchy ; but many prejudices and much ill 
blood must die out first. He determined to watch over the 
interests of England like the sentinel of Providence, and he 
called himself the Lord Protector. Well did he deserve the 
name ! 

Well, he has, then, done the deed, call him what you will ; 
he has really ascended the throne. He did, no doubt, that 
which the best spirits of his own day did perceive to be wisest 
and best ; but let no person see in this any inauguration of 
freedom, or homage to complete suffrage ; it was homage to 
power. He took that place by right of the ablest, and we 
may now follow him a few paces into the great acts of his 
government. We have called him the Protector. That word, 
you will* perceive, does adequately represent what he was, and 
what he dared to be — the guardian genius of England's Com- 
monwealth ; the name as we believe most venerable for his 
age in the annals of civil and religious freedom ; man of 
widest heart and shrewdest eye. 

Some have compared him with Napoleon — Napoleon the 
First — to his disadvantage. But we shall soon see the justice 
of that criticism which finds the greatness of Napoleon rather 
in that he did his work on stilts ; he performed his work in a 
large, ambitious manner, and strode to and fro in self-con- 
scious exaggeration before the eyes of Europe. Cromwell 
performed his work on our own island, but he did not leave 
it. He humbled the proud empires of Europe by a glance. 
It took battles to raise himself to his place of Protector, but 
he became the Dictator of Europe by the magnetism of a 
great intelligence. From his council-chamber in Whitehall 
he dictated his own terms. Always let it be remembered 
that Napoleon the First, in order to retain his power, directed 
all the energies of his country away from any, even the slight- 
est, attempt at domestic reform of his own land, where reforms 
of every kind were so much needed ; and he decimated the un- 
happy people of his own land by embroiling them in wars with 
every nation in Europe ; he kindled the conflagrations of martial 
glory, and carried everywhere the banners and eagles of con- 
quest, in order that he might dazzle by the fame of his great mili- 
tary dictatorship. To our indignant humanity. Napoleon looks 
like a poor, self-exaggerating child, contrasted with the far- 
mer of St. Ives. Macaulay well points out how greatly it 



148 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

would have been to the interests of Cromwell's ambition to 
have plunged his country into a great European war, and how 
fertile were the occasions for such a war ! And had he con- 
stituted himself the armed as he was the peaceful, protector 
of Protestantism in Europe, like another Gustavus Adolphus, 
how prompt at his call for such a cause would have leaped 
up that mighty army of which he was the chief, and which had 
regarded his voice, through so many well-fought fields, as the 
very voice of the Lord of Hosts speaking to men. He had 
no. such ambition ; only to serve his country as best he could, 
and Protestantism always, in all peaceful sincerity. 

Cromwell has often been compared, and to his disadvantage, 
with Washington \ in fact, there can be no comparison, the 
two men and their entire careers are all a contrast. How 
easy, how simple the work of the illustrious founder of the 
United States compared with that of the great soldier of the 
Commonwealth of England ! Cromwell rises as on a mighty 
rock, a great upheaval from a mob of kings. He rises soli- 
tary from the sea of Time behind him ; but, again, the sea of 
old Mediaevalism and Feudalism rises, and rolls around the 
rock on which he stands solitary and alone. Washington 
stands high on his rock; but it is like a breakwater, or a 
peninsula of some great continent, and from it there spreads, 
not the moaning sea around it, but there extends from it the 
road along which marches victorious humanity. It is under- 
stood that they both refused the crown ; Cromwell in the 
council chamber, Washington in the camp. The witchery of 
that separation of royalty had no power to detain either from 
the high behests of duty, or to delude them to the path in 
which they might have found themselves in treason against 
the rights of man. Washington rose amid the acclamations 
and love of the United States ; Cromwell knew that he only 
leashed, and held in check the gorgons, hydras, and chimeras 
of persecution, despotism, and tyranny. Washington beheld 
all conflicting interests combining in one happy, prosperous 
nationality ; Cromwell stood strong, holding the balances and 
scales of toleration and justice, between a hundred sects, all 
prepared to fly at each other's throats, and every one of which 
hated him because he was strong. Washington died in peace, 
and rests in an honored grave ; scarcely was Cromwell laid 
in his tomb when his body was torn from the grave, and the 
fiends, who could not touch the living lion, like jackals or 
hyenas tore the dead body limb from limb, and affixed his 
venerable head over Westminster Hall. Widely different 



CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR. I49 

was the work of Cromwell from that of Washington ; and 
widely different his heart of passion and fire from Wash- 
. ington's calm, still spirit. Yet Cromwell was, as has been 
most truly said, the greatest human force ever directed to a 
moral purpose, and he seems to look across the ocean and 
even to anticipate Washington. He still rises on his rock 
forecasting coming years. The men, the results of whose 
work are most remote, must wait longest for the reward 
and vintage of their toil. Hence the work of Washington 
met with its immediate reward. He, indeed, laid the founda- 
tion of a Constitution which should abide secure in the future ; 
but its immediate worth was recognized, he had nothing to do 
with settling the rights of conscience, the claims of distracting 
opinions and the conflicts of Church and State. The space 
which Cromwell filled was so large that only when far re- 
moved could his greatness be seen ; and to him, perhaps, 
almost beyond any other mortal, most truly applies the often- 
quoted words of the sweet English poet whom Mr. Matthew 
Arnold is now attempting to teach the English nation to de- 
spise — 

" As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds be spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head I " 



CHAPTER XV. 

CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR. 

April, 1653, he dissolved "the Rump ! " "We did not hear 
a dog bark at their going," he said afterward in one of his 
speeches, and it expresses the very truth of the event. Hence- 
forth, until 1658 — a brief parenthesis of time, indeed, in the 
history of the country — he governed the country absolutely. 
In a history so brief as this we shall not attempt to detail the 
circumstances of those troublesome years. Alas ! all his bat- 
tles had been easy to win compared with the task of ruling 
the distracted realm. He called " the little Parliament," or 
the short, as its predecessor had been called " the long." It 
had been resolved in a council of the chief officers and eminent 
persons of the realm — but no doubt by Cromwell's own desire 
— that the Commonwealth should be in a single person, that 



tso OLIVER CROMWELL, 

that person should be Cromwell, under the title of the Lord 
Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to be advised 
and assisted by " a council of not more than twenty-one able, 
discreet, and godly persons." His inauguration took place on 
the 1 6th of December, of that year, in the presence of the 
Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, the Barons 
of the Exchequer, and all the judges in their robes, the Coun- 
cil of State, the Lord Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen of the 
City of London in their scarlet gowns, and the chief officers 
of the army ; a chair of state was set in the midst of the Court 
of Chancer}^, and on the left side of it stood Cromwell in a 
plain suit of black velvet. An instrument of Government was 
read to him, to which he attached his signature, and in which 
he declared, in the presence of God, that he would not violate 
or infringe the' matters and things therein contained, and to 
which he set his name. He then sat down in the chair of 
state, which was while he filled it the strongest throne in Eu- 
rope ; next day he was proclaimed Protector, by sound of 
trumpet, in the Palace Yard, Westminster, and at the Royal 
Exchange in the City. 

What manner of man was he at this period — fifty-four years 
of age ? See him standing there, before all England, and all 
following ages, a man of some five feet ten or more, of massive, 
stout stature, and large massive head, dignified military car- 
riage ; " of leonine aspect," says Carlyle, " a figure of sufficient 
impressiveness, not lovely to the man milliner, nor pretending 
to be so ; an expression of valor and devout intelligence, en- 
ergy, and delicacy on a basis of simplicity ; wart above the 
right eyebrow, nose of considerable blunt aquiline proportions ; 
strict, yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and 
also, if need were, of all fierceness and rigors ; deep loving eyes 
— call them grave, call them stern — lookixig from those craggy 
brows as if in life-long sorrow, and yet not thinking it sorrow, 
thinking it only labor and endeavor." Thus Hampden's 
prophecy at last was realized, and " that sloven " had made 
himself the greatest man in the kingdom.* 

Cromwell called parliaments from time to time, but they 
gave him no satisfaction, nor the nation either ; the members 

* Concerning likenesses of Cromwell, it can not be uninteresting, I think, to say 
that, probably, my excellent friend, the Rev. D. Kewei' Williams, of Hackney, Lon- 
don (England), has the largest and most curious collection of every kind — engrav- 
ings, paintings, etc., etc. — in the world ; in fact, he has a real Cromwellian museum. 
Let a committee be formed for the purchase of these ; let all other possible obtain- 
able Cromwell memorials be added, and some such monument reared to the Protec- 
tor's memory as that of Robert Burns in Edinburgh, as Goethe's house in Frankfort, 
as Michael Angelo's in Florence. 



CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR, 



151 



spent their time very much in useless and idle chatter. But, 
again and again, he was urged by the Council and by the Com- 
mons to take the Crown : this formed no part of the plan in 
his mind. We have seen that he probably knew that the 
nation would settle itself beneath its ancient monarchy again, 
and he had no ambition to form or found a phantom royal 
dynasty. 

The following is a very characteristic letter to his son-in- 
law, and seems to admit us, in a very clear manner, into the 
mind of the Protector on this subject : 

" To the Lord Fleetwood^ Lord-Deputy of Lr eland. 

" Whitehall, 22d June, 1655. 

" Dear Charles, — I write not often : at once I desire 
thee to know I most dearly love thee ; and, indeed, my heart 
is plain to thee, as thy heart can well desire ; let nothing 
shake thee in this. The wretched jealousies that are among 
us, and the spirit of calumny, turn all into gall and worm- 
wood. My heart is for the people of God ; that the Lord 
knows, and will in due time manifest ; yet thence are my 
wounds ; which though it grieves me, yet through the grace 
of God doth not discourage me totally. Many good men are 
repining at everything ; though indeed very many good are 
well satisfied, and satisfying daily. The will of the Lord 
will bring forth good in due time. 

" It's reported that you are to be sent for, and Harry to 
be Deputy ; which, truly, never entered into my heart. The 
Lord knows my desire was for him and his brother to have 
lived private lives in the country ; and Harry knows this 
very well, and how difficultly I was persuaded to give him 
his commission for his present place. This I say as from a 
simple and sincere heart. The noise of my bemg crowned^ etc.^ 
are similar malicious figments . . . . 

" Dear Charles, my dear love to thee and to my dear 
3iddy, who is a joy to my heart, for what I hear of the Lord 
in-her. Bid her be cheerful and rejoice in the Lord once 
and again ; if she knows the covenant (of grace), she can 
not but do so. For that transaction is without her ; sure 
and steadfast, between the Father and the Mediator in His 
blood. Therefore, leaning upon the Son, or looking to 
Him, thirsting after Him, and embracing Him, we are His 
seed, and the covenant is sure to all the seed. The compact 
is for the seed ; God is bound in faithfulness tQ Christ, and 



152 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

in .Him to us. The covenant is without 2^J / a transaction 
between God and Christ. Look up to it. God engageth in 
it to pardon us ; to write His law in our heart ; to plant His 
fear so that we shall never depart from Him. We, under all 
our sins and infirmities, can daily offer a perfect Christ ; and 
thus we have peace and safety, and apprehension of love, 
from a Father in covenant ; who can not deny Himself. And 
truly in this is all my salvation ; and this helps me to bear 
my great burdens. 

" If you have a mind to come over with your dear wife, 
take the best opportunity for the good of the public and 
your own convenience. The Lord bless you all. Pray for 
me, that the Lord would direct and keep me, His servant. I 
bless the Lord I am not my own ; but my condition to flesh 
and blood is very hard. Pray for me ; I do for you all. 
Commend me to all friends. 

" I rest, your loving father, Oliver P." 

On the 13th of April, 1657, the Protector delivered his 
eleventh recorded speech, in reply to the reasons which had 
been urged upon him by the House of Commons, and the 
great lawyers, to take upon himself the designation of king : 

" I undertook the place I am now in, not so much out of 
hope of doing any good, as a desire to prevent mischief and 
evil ; which I did see was imminent on the nation. I say, 
we were running headlong into confusion and disorder, and 
would necessarily have run into blood ; and I was passive 
to those that desired me to undertake the place which I now 
have. 

" And, therefore, I am not contending for one name com- 
pared with another ; and therefore, have nothing to answer 
to any arguments that were used for preferring the name of 
kingship to protectorship. For I should almost think any 
name were better than my name ; and I should altogether 
think any person fitter than I am for such business ; and I 
compliment not, God knows it. 

" But this I should say, that I do think you, in the settling 
of the peace and liberties of this nation, which cries as loud 
upon you as ever nation did for somewhat that may beget a 
consistence, ought to attend to that ; otherwise the nation 
will fall in pieces ! And in that, so far as I can, / am ready 
to serve, not as a king, but as a constable, if you like ! For 
truly I have, as before God, often thought that I could 
not tell what my business "was, nor what I was in the place 



CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR. 153 

where I stood in, save comparing myself to a good constable 
set to keep the peace of the parish. 

" I say, therefore, I do judge for myself there is no such 
necessity of this name of king. 

" I must say a little ; I think I have somewhat of conscience 
to answer as to the matter, and I shall deal seriously as before 
God. 

" If you do not all of you, I am sure some of you do, and it 
behooves me to say that I do ' know my calling from the first to 
this day.' I was a person who, from my first employment, 
was suddenly preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to 
greater ; from my first being a captain of a troop of horse ; 
and did labor as well as I could to discharge my trust ; and 
God blessed me therein as it pleased Him. And I did truly 
and plainly — and in a way of foolish simplicity, as it was 
judged by very great and wise men, and good men too — desire 
to make my instruments help me in that work. I had a very 
worthy friend then ; and he was a very noble person, and I 
know his memory is very grateful to all — Mr. John Hampden. 
At my going out into this engagement [enterprise], I saw our 
men were beaten at every hand. I did indeed ; and desired 
him that he would make some additions to my Lord Essex's 
army, of some new regiments ; and I told him 1 would be ser- 
viceable to him in bringing such men in as I thought had a 
spirit that would do something in the work. This is very true 
that I tell you ; God knows I lie not. * Your troops,' said I, 
are most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters, and 
such kind of fellows ; and, said I, ' their troops are gentle- 
man's sons, younger sons, and persons of quality; do you 
think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever 
be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honor and courage, 
and resolution in them ? You must get men of spirit ; and 
take it not ill what I say — I know you will not — of a spirit that 
is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go ; — or else you will be 
beaten still.' I told him so ; I did truly. He was a wise and 
worthy person ; and he did think that I talked a good notion, 
but an impracticable one. Truly I told him that I could do 
somewhat in it ; I did so, and the result was — impute it to 
what you please — I raised such men as had the fear of God 
before them, as made some conscience of what they did ; and 
from that day forward, I must say to you, they were never 
beaten, and wherever they were engaged against the enemy, 
they beat continually. And truly this is matter of praise to 
God : and it hath some instruction in it, to own men who are 



154 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

religious and godly. And so many of them as are peaceable, 
and honestly, and quietly disposed to live within rules of 
government, and will be subject to those gospel rules of 
obeying magistrates — I reckon no godliness without that 
circle ! Without that the spirit is diabolical — it is devilish — 
it is from diabolical spirits — from the depth of Satan's wicked- 
ness. 

" I will be bold to apply this (what I said to Mr. Hampden) 
to our present purpose ; because there are still such men in this 
nation ; godly men of the same spirit, men that will not be 
beaten down by a worldly or carnal spirit while they keep their 
integrity. And I deal plainly and faithfully with you, when I 
say : I can not think that God would bless an undertaking of 
anything (kingships or whatever else) which would, justly and 
with cause, grieve them. I know that very generally good men 
do not swallow this title. It is my duty and my conscience to 
beg of you that there may be no hard things put upon me ; 
things,. I mean, hard to the7Ji^ which they can not swallow. By 
showing a tenderness even possibly (if it be their weakness) to 
the weakness of those who have integrity, and honesty, and 
uprightness, you will be the better able to root out of this 
nation all those who think their virtue lies in despising and 
opposing authority." * 

It sometimes seems to the present writer as if, amid the wild 
sceneiy of important sectarian jealousy and mad intolerance, 
Cromwell was the only man who had an enlarged sense of true 
freedom. Freedom of conscience, in the sense of most per- 
sons of that time, appears to have been that they should have 
the right to it themselves, without any claim upon them for 
its exercise toward others ; persecution was not wrong in fact 
only it was wrong when exercised against them.selves. This 
was especially the case with the Presbyterian party of that 
time ; but almost all are involved in the same reprobation ; 
while we write this, upon our table lies the treatise of Thomas 
Edwards, "A Treatise against Toleration, and Pretended 
Liberty of Conscience," written for the express purpose of 
showing that toleration is against the whole current, scope, 
and sense of all Scripture, and sets up the polluted, defiled 
conscience of men above the Scriptures, pleading for the 
power of the magistrate to punish heresy, and indeed invok- 
ing the severest statutes of the old Jewish law, and even 

* The reader will remember that some of the above sentences were quoted in the 
chapter on "Cromwell and his Ironsides ; " but in the connection in which they 
now stand, it can scarcely be regarded as superfluous that they are quoted again. 



CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR. 155 

statutes yet more severe, as applicable to Christian society. 
No Papist ever went further than this writer, and many others 
of his time, in his attempt to develop a perfect science of 
persecution. The same doctrines are unfolded at greater 
length in his " Gangrena," of which the following passage is 
a fair sample and illustration : 

" A Toleration is the grand design of the devil — his master- 
piece, and chief engine he has at this time, to uphold his 
tottering kingdom. It is the most compendious, ready, sure 
way to destroy all religion, lay all waste, and bring in all evil. 
It is a most transcendent, catholic, and fundamental evil for 
this kingdom of any that can be imagined. As original sin is 
the most fundamental sin, having the seed and spawn of all in 
it ; so a toleration hath all errors in it, and all evils. It is 
against the whole stream and current of Scripture both in the 
Old and New Testament ; both in matters of faith and man- 
ners ; both general and particular commands. It overthrows 
all relations, political, ecclesiastical, and economical. And 
whereas other evils, whether of judgment or practice, be but 
against some one or two places of Scripture, or relation, this 
is against all — this is the Abaddon, Apollyon, the destroyer 
of all religion, the abomination of all desolation and astonish- 
ment, the liberty of perdition, and therefore the devil follows 
it night and day ; working mightily in many by writing books 
for it, and other ways ; — all the devils in hell, and their instru- 
ments, being at work to promote a toleration." 

This is exceedingly pleasant and comfortable writing ! and 
it may give some idea of the spirit which ^was abroad in that 
time, and which the Lord Protector felt himself raised up reso- 
lutely to hold in check. The Fifth Monarchy men constituted 
another amicable section, with Rogers at their head — an 
amazing nuisance in the nation ; indeed, a catalogue of the 
rival sects in Cromwell's army v/ould be an astonishing com- 
pilation. 

Cromwell's whole ideas of religious liberty rose and ranged 
far beyond those of most of the men of his age. How im- 
pressively this comes out in his correspondence with the 
Scotch Commissioners and Presbyterian clergymen after the 
battle of Dunbar. "You say," he writes, "that you have 
just cause to regret that men of civil employments should 
usurp the calHng and employment of the ministry to the 
scandal of the Reformed Kirks. Are you troubled that 
Christ is preached ? Is preaching so exclusively your function ? 
I thought the Covenant and these professors of it could 



158 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

have been willing that any should speak good of the name of 
Christ : if not, it is no covenant of God's approving ; nor are 
these Kirks you mention in so much the spouse of Christ. 
Where do you find in the Scripture a ground to warrant such 
an assertion that preaching is exclusively your function ? 
Though an approbation from men hath order in it, and may 
do well, yet he that hath no better warrant than that hath 
none at all. I hope He that ascended up on high may give 
His gifts to whom He pleases ; and if those gifts be the seal 
of mission, be not you envious though Eldad and Medad 
prophesy. You know who bids us * covet earnestly the best gifts, 
but chiefly that we may prophesy ; ' which the apostle ex- 
plains there to be a speaking to instruction, and edification, 
and comfort;- which speaking, the instructed, the edified, and 
comforted can best tell the energy and effect of. Your pre- 
tended fear lest error should step in will be found to be an 
unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural 
liberty, upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth 
abuse it, judge. If a man speak foolishly, yet suffer him 
gladly because ye are wise ; if erroneously, the truth more 
appears by your conviction of him. Stop such a man's 
mouth by sound words which can not be gainsaid. If we 
speak blasphemously, or to the disturbance of the public 
peace, let the civil magistrate punish him ; if truly, rejoice in 
the truth. The ministers in England are supported, and have 
liberty to preach the Gospel ; though not to rail, nor under 
pretensp thereof, to overtop the civil power or abuse it as 
they please. No man hath b^^ troubled in England or in 
Ireland for preaching the Gospel ; nor has any minister been 
molested in Scotland since the coming of the army hither. 
Then speaking truth becomes the ministers of Christ." 
These last words are in reply to a charge made bythe Scotch 
Commissioners that Cromwell had prevented the holding of 
religious services, and the charge very singularly occurs in 
reply to Cromwell's warrant in which immediately after the 
battle of Dunbar he says, by secretary Edward Whalley, " I 
have received command from my Lord-General to desire you 
to let the ministers of Edinburgh, now in the Castle, know that 
they have your liberty granted them, if they please to take 
the pains to preach in their several churches, and that my 
lord hath given special command both to officers and soldiers, 
that they shall not in the least be molested." But such lib- 
erty as this, as our readers will know, did not satisfy the 
Presbyterian mind of that day, which demanded not only the 



CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR. 157 

right to the expression of their own convictions, but also the 
repression of all who followed not with them. Did not Mil- 
ton say of them that, " Presbyter was priest spelt large." 
Indeedj^ in that day there was a universal disposition to per- 
secute and repress ; it was not that persecution, in itself, was 
judged a crime, only when it assailed the order of particular 
opinion. Toleration was regarded by Episcopalian and 
Presbyterian as an abominable Erastianism, or latitudinarian 
and Laodicean half-heartedness ; and Oliver alone stood forth 
vindicating liberty of conscience to all. 

In his fifth recorded speech, delivered on the 17th of Sep- 
tember, 1656, we find him expressing his opinion strongly as 
to the maintenance of religious liberty, and the equality of all : 

" I will tell you the truth : our practice since the last Par- 
liament hath been to let all this nation see that whatever preten- 
sions to religion would continue quiet, peaceable, they should 
enjoy conscience and liberty to themselves ; and not to make 
religion a pretense for arms and blood. All that tends, to 
combination, to interests and factions, we shall not care by 
the Grace of God, whom we meet withal, though never so 
specious, if they be not quiet ! And truly I am against 
all liberty of conscience repugnant to this. If men will 
profess — be they those under baptism, be they those of 
the independent judgment simply, or of the Presbyterian 
judgment — in the name of God, encourage them so long as 
they do plainly continue to be thankful to God, and to make 
use of the liberty given them to enjoy their own consciences ! 
For as it was said to-day [in Dr. Owen's sermon before Par- 
liament], undoubtedly ' this is the peculiar interest all this 
while contended for.' 

" Men who believe in Jesus Christ, and walk in a profes- 
sion answerable to his Faith ; men who believe in the remis- 
sion of the sins through the blood of Christ, and free justi- 
fication by the blood of Christ ; who live upon the grace of 
God — are members of Jesus Christ, and are to him the apple 
of his eye. Whoever has this Faith, let his form be what it 
will ; he walking peaceably without prejudice to others under 
other forms — it is a debt due to God and Christ ; and He 
will require it, if that Christian may not enjoy his liberty. 

" If a man of one form will be trampling upon the heels of 
another form ; if an Independent, for example, will despise 
him who is under baptism, and will revile him, and reproach 

him and provoke him — I will not suffer it in him 

God gave us hearts and spirits to keep things equal. Which, 



158 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

truly I must confess to you hath been my temper. I have 
had some boxes on my ear, and rebukes — on the one hand 
and on the other. I have borne my reproach ; but I have, 
through God's mercy, not been unhappy in hindering aay one 
rehgion to improve upon another." 

He was constantly under the necessity of so watching over 
the sacred rights of religious liberty, that as we know he 
sometimes had to interpose his authority to protect and 
guard; so again he had to interpose his severe condemna- 
tion against words and measures which appeared to him to be 
fatal to the rights of conscience. It is thus we find him 
speaking on the 22d of January, 1655, when he summoned the 
House to meet him in the Painted Chamber : "Is there not 
yet upon the spirits of men a strange itching ? Nothing will 
satisfy them unless they can press their fingers upon their 
brethren's consciences, to pinch them there. To do this was 
no part of the contest we had with the common adversary. 
And wherein consisted this more than in obtaining that liberty 
from tyranny of the bishops to all species of Protestants ? 
to worship God according to their own light and consciences ? 
For want of which many of our brethren forsook their native 
countries to seek their bread from strangers, and to live in 
howling wildernesses ; and for which also many that remained 
here were imprisoned, and otherwise abused and made the 
scorn of the nation. Those that were sound in the Faith, how 
proper was it for them to labor for liberty, for a just liberty, 
that men might not be trampled upon for their consciences ! 
Had not they themselves labored, but lately, under the weight 
of persecution 1 And was it fit for them to sit heavy upon 
others ? Is it ingenuous to ask liberty, and not give it "i . . . 
What greater hypocrisy than for those who were oppressed 
by the bishops to become the greatest oppressors themselves, 
so soon as their yoke was removed ? I could wish that they 
who call for liberty now also had not too much of that spirit, 
if the power were in their hands ! As for profane persons, 
blasphemous, such as preach sedition ; the contentious rail- 
ers, evil speakers, who seek by evil words to corrupt good 
manners, persons of loose conversation — punishment from the 
civil magistrate ought to meet with these." 

But we must give a few swift glances into the inner life of 
this great heart — the domestic life. He has been assailed here 
too. We love to look at Cromwell after the hard, scarred face 
and the strong mailed hand have revealed themselves. We 
love to think of him as husband, father, grandfather, and 



CROMWELL THE PROTECTOR. 159 

master of a family. " His letters reveal all," says Eliot War- 
burton, when he mentions the discovery of the letters of 
Charles I., after Naseby, and the perfidy they revealed, trans- 
forming ever after the phrase, " On the word of a king," into 
the synonym of a He. " And," says that lively and prejudiced 
writer (we have quoted this expression already), " if all the 
letters of the dark Cromwell could have been opened, what 
would they have revealed ? " Well^ they all have been discov- 
ered, all have been opened; and we suppose never, in the 
history of man, has there been presented such a transparent 
wholeness. It is 07ie mirror of simple nobleness : every little 
note, and every family epistle, . and every letter to the State 
officers, all reveal the same man. " A single eye, and a whole 
body full of light." Of course, in his letters as in his speeches, 
he says no more than he has to say ; he never labors for any 
expression. He is not a man who can use a flowing imagina- 
tive diction. His words are strong, stiff, unbendable beings, 
but they convey a meaning and speak out a full, determined 
heart. 

The great crime which had been charged upon Cromwell in 
his household, is that it was too Puritanical ; that is, that it 
was a consistent, religious home. Let " Lord Will-be-will '* 
say what he will, Cromwell knew nothing of those temporizing 
policies by which, in the present day, we argue that great place 
must accommodate itself to the world and to the world's ways. 
We have pictures given to us of his household. Upon the 
occasion of the signing of the treaty of peace with Holland, the 
embassador gives account of his reception at the Protector's 
Court. How calm and quiet and dignified the account of that 
reception ! Music, indeed, was playing while they were din- 
ing, but after that the Protector gave out a hymn ; and as he 
handed the book to the embassador, he told him "that was 
the best paper that had passed between them as yet." Digni- 
fied and beautiful is the account of the gentle behavior of the 
Protector to the wife and daughter of the embassador. Then, 
after a walk on the banks of the river for half an hour, the 
prayers in the family ; and so the evening closed — ^very much, 
indeed, such a simple evening as we and our friends might 
spend together. 

Of course Cromwell's was a Puritan household — a house- 
hold not so unpleasant for the imagination to linger upon as 
some may think. The life of the Puritan home reveals the 
Church life of the period : even the air was laden with mysti- 
cism, a floating mysticism pervaded almost the whole theology 



tGo OLIVER CROMWELL, 

of the time : and a mystic can never be a very merry man. 
The recreations of Puritan homes were reduced to the narrow- 
est compass compatible with good sense and taste. Wakes were 
abolished, maypoles pulled down and cockfights and bear bait- 
ings brought to an end. Meantime, the Puritan was not desti- 
tute of recreation : there were nice flower gardens for the 
ladies, and brave field sports for the gentlemen ; but the daily 
life of the Puritan was brought within a compass which, while 
it did not prohibit the joke and the merry laugh, must, we 
fancy, have often and usually shaded down life to a sternness 
and habitual severity very much in harmony, it may be, with the 
seriousness of the times, but not reflecting that cheerfulness 
which a wiser and wider view of God and truth and nature 
would create and permit. 

Cromwell well knew what of ceremony to abate, and what 
to retain. " Ceremony keeps up all things," said John 
Selden. We can see through it. True ; so we can see through 
the glass, " the penny glass which holds some rich essence, 
or refined water ; but without the frail glass, the essence, the 
real value, would be lost." We may have too little ceremony 
as well as too much. It does not matter much, but we do 
rather like our servant to tap at our study door before com- 
ing in, although we do not care about her handing our letters 
on a silver salver. When embassadors crowded Cromwell's 
Court from all the States of Europe, some of them, in defer- 
ence to the usualitieS' of royalty, desired to kiss his hand ; 
but, with manly dignity, he retired back two or three steps 
higher, to his throne, bowed to the deputation, and so closed 
the audience. A man, we see, who will not bate an inch of 
his nation's dignity, nor wear more than his manhood for his 
own. As he would not adopt the designation, so he would 
not permit himself to play at being a king. 

Shall we say how he defended learning and scholarship ? 
He had a wonderfully omniscient eye^ for the discover}^ of 
great men ; not merely great generals or great statesmen, but 
for every kind of learning and scholarship. We know that 
his two secretaries were John Milton and Andrew Marvell. 
We know that he sought the friendship of Baxter. When he 
first met with Dr. Owen, he said, " Sir, you are the person I 
must be acquainted with," and took him by the hand and led 
him into the garden. And after a long conversation with 
John Howe, nothing would satisfy him but that seraphic man 
must become his chaplain. How graciously and kindly he 
listened to George Fox also, when he spoke, and desired to 



CROMWELL THE FROTECTOlt i6i 

see and to talk with him again. He surrounded his house 
and table with the holiest and most scholarly men of his time. 
He committed the University of Oxford to Owen. We know 
what it was when he went there. We know that scholarship 
was expelled ; that it was the haunt of Comus and his crew ; 
and we know what he made it. It is to his immortal honor 
that the Biblia Folyglotta Waltoni^ perhaps the most valuable 
and important biblical book ever issued from the British 
press, owed the existence of its gigantic volumes to Cromwell. 
It was a most precious compendium of Scriptural criticism and 
interpretation. Everything of that time, previously attempted, 
had been performed for the Catholic Church, and at the 
expense of Catholic princes. No Protestant prince had even 
been able to undertake such a work. Dr. Owen at first 
opposed it, looking upon it with suspicion. It is very char- 
acteristic that Cromwell, respecting Owen as he did, encour- 
aged it, assisted in defraying the expense of publishing it, 
and admitted five thousand reams of paper free of duty, and 
so saved the author from loss by its publication. It was pub- 
lished during the Protectorate, and dedicated to Cromwell. 
-But its mean and dastardly compiler, upon the return of 
Charles Stuart, erased the dedication to the man who had so 
substantially aided him, and inserted that of the king, who 
cared neither for the project, its scholarship, nor the Bible. 
He delighted to gather round him great minds. John Milton 
was his familiar friend and Latin or Foreign Secretary ; he 
encouraged the young genius of honest Andrew ]\Iai-vell, the 
patriot and the poet ; Hartlib, a native of Poland, the bosom 
friend of Milton, and one of the foremost advocates of a 
wise education, was honored and pensioned by him ; he was 
the steadfast friend, notwithstanding episcopacy, of Arch- 
bishop Usher ; and far removed as his own sentiments were 
from Universalism, he shielded from persecution John Biddle, 
called the Father of Unitarians, and in consideration of his 
worth, even granted him a pension of one hundred crowns a 
year. Even Sir Kenelm Digby, Royalist as he was found 
himself at the Protector's table, who no doubi enjoyed the 
mystical wanderings of his mind, and certainly did honor to 
his literary merits. He invited to his table, sometimes, men 
disaffected to himself — notably more than once he invited 
several of the nobility, and after dinner told them, to their 
surprise, where they had lately been, what company they 
had lately kept, and advised them the next time they drank 
the health of Charles Stuart and the members of the royal 
II 



i62 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

family, to do it a little more secretly, as the knowledge 
might not be so safe with some as with him. Such things 
as these might be mentioned to the too great extension 
of this chapter, but from every aspect it seems the charac- 
ter of a reverent and faithful man shines out upon us. In 
one of his speeches, he says, " I have lived the latter part 
of my life in, if I may say so, the fire, in the midst of troubles ; 
but, truly, my comfort in all my life hath been that the bur- 
dens which have lain heavy on me were laid on me by the 
hand of God." It is often said, a man can only do a man's 
work ; but, as the man's work was very great, so was the man 
great who was set to perform it, and of him that is especially 
true which the poet Browning has so well taught in that which 
is, perhaps, his greatest poem, " Sordello," that 

" Ends accomplished, turn to means." 

To live is indeed to strive, but the chief idea of life is hot 
always realized in the sense of the mere realist ; his sense of 
the thing done is limited by that which stands present, com- 
plete, and accomplished to the eye ; to him, therefore, all 
failure or incompleteness, is baffled or foiled existence. But 
the great poet, to whom we have referred, teaches us that it 
is not so. There is a world of work which is out of sight, 
which has told upon, and borne along, the individual soul, 
and it may be the soul of the age or ages, along with it ; and 
hence at the close of Cromwell's day, or life, as with Sordello, 
so it may be yet more truly said of him — 

" The real way seemed made up of all the ways. 
Mood after mood of the one mind in him ; 
Tokens of the existence, bright or dim, 
Of a transcendent and all-bracing sense, 
Demanding only outward influence : 
A soul above his soul, 

Power to uplift his power, this moon's control 
Over the sea depths." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

' FOREIGN POLICY AND POWER OF CROMWELL. 

Referring to the foreign policy of Cromwell, the wisdom 
of which several wise little critics have chosen to call in ques- 
tion, it will be in the memory of our readers how he once said 
" He hoped he should make the name of an Englishman as 



FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMWELL, 163 

great as ever that of a Roman had been." It is not too much 
to say that England had never before so overawed the nations 
of Europe as during the reign of Cromwell. Perhaps some 
readers will say, What right has any nrtion, or any man, to 
overawe other nations or other princ^:^? This is very plausi- 
ble, but in Cromwell's case it does not correctly state the mat- 
ter. It should be remembered that in that age, in Cromwell's 
time, the strong nations of Europe were set upon crubhing the 
principles of freedom as represented by Protestant principles 
and in Protestant States. France and Spain were almost 
equally obnoxious to freedom, but in those days Spain was in- 
comparably the strongest power ; true, her power was on the 
wane, but she had the traditional inheritance of amazing em- 
pire, and she had the actual possession of the greatest and 
most wealthy colonies. The cruelty of her intolerance to Prot- 
estantism, and to all civil and religious liberty, had been 
written literally in letters of fire and blood, in the stakes and 
tortures of the Inquisition, in the more than decimation, the 
destruction of towns and villages ; nor was it so long since 
that the huge Armada was floated against England in the name 
of all papistry and depotism. All Cromwell's conduct shows 
the good will he had to, and the symphathy he had with, the 
Netherlands. It is quite likely that France and her statesmen 
were by no means charming to him.; but he judged Spain to 
be as more worthy of his sword in virtue of her own more 
equal power, so also more deserving of his vengeance as 
the oppressor of the saints of the Lord, and the cruel foe 
to every form of freedom. One of the great instruments he 
chose to this end is one of the most illustrious names in the 
annals of the English navy, Robert Blake, Admiral Blake. 
What a splendid halo of chivalric memories gathers round 
the name of that great commander ! there is scarcely another 
name in our nautical annals so fresh, so full of all the romance 
and poetry of the sea. One of the greatest of Cromwell's con- 
temporaries, we must devote a page to the story of the life of 
the man who did as much as any of his time to make England 
respected and feared by her hereditary foes. 

Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, the son of a respect- 
able Somersetshire merchant. We believe the old house is still 
standing, and shown, where he first drew breath ; its gardens 
run to the river, and its windows look out on the Quantock 
Hills. Moreover, his young eyes early became familiar with 
the masts of the vessels of many nations, suggesting visions of 
the distant purple seas and recently discovered isles. He came 



i64 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

of a Puritan stock ; he received a university education, and is 
said to have gone further in the knowledge of classics and 
books than has usually fallen to the lot of the sons of the sea. 
Blake in his early life appears to have been a thorough Puritan, 
and also very much of a Republican. He was returned mem- 
ber for Bridgewater to what is called the Short Parliament, 
which met on Monday, the 13th of April, 1640 ; and he no 
doubt heard the pleasant words with which the Lord Keeper 
Finch opened that Parliamenc : " His Majesty's kingly resolu- 
tions are seated in the ark of his sacred breast, and it were a 
presumption of too high a nature for any Uzzah uncalled to 
touch it : yet His Majesty is now pleased to lay by the shining 
beams of majesty, as Phoebus did to Phseton, that the distance 
between sovereignty and subjection should not bar you of that 
filial freedom of access to his person and counsels." But the 
time had come when this style of language was no longer to be 
endured by the Commons, and so they determined, before they 
would give to the king any supplies, they would seek the 
redress of many grievances. The astonished king dissolved 
this Parliament iri little more than a fortnight, and then in the 
same year assembled the Long Parliament, of which, however, 
Blake was not returned member until 1645, when he took his 
seat for Taunton, and then when the war broke out, and the 
king raised his standarctat Nottingham, while Cromwell mar- 
shaled his Ironsides in Huntingdonshire, Blake hurried down 
to the Western counties, and with celerity raised a troop of 
dragoons, with which he dashed to and fro, and did good 
service to the cause of the Parliament in the West. He soon 
rose high in the esteem of those for whom he was acting ; he 
was appointed colonel, and also one of the Committee of Ways 
and Means for Somerset. To those who have only known 
Blake as one of our great English sea-kings, it seems singular 
to think of him as a commander on the field. His conflicts 
seem to have been in the West with Prince Maurice, Prince 
Rupert's brother. He forced his way into his native town of 
Bridgewater, and a pathetic story tells how there he lost his 
brother, Samuel Blake, in a skirmish. He defended the little 
seaport town of Lyme besieged by Maurice, and he compelled 
the Prince to give up the siege after the loss of 2000 men. 
He attempted to force Plymouth ; and he did relieve Taunton 
when a sudden attack had been made upon that town, the 
refuge of a multitude of Puritans of that region. The whole 
region round Taunton appears to have been devastated and 
desolated by Goring's ferocious troops, generally called 



FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMWELL, 165 

** Goring's crew," Blake summarily scattered these Royalist 
ruffians, for which he received the thanks of Parliament and a 
special vote of ;^5oo. It was indeed a great triumph. This 
was not long before the battle of Naseby ; then the king's 
game was up, and Blake appears for a short time to have re- 
treated into the quietude of private life. 

Blake was a man who had no disposition to take upon him- 
self the management or direction of the complications of State. 
He was a moderate man, heartily anti-royalist, but with no 
wish to see the king beheaded. All the accounts that we have 
of him set him before us in a pleasant and beautiful light. He 
was a Puritan, but not morose ; a cheerful country gentleman, 
orderly and pious, ready with good and holy words when such 
were needed in his household, but fond of a hearty laugh, a 
cup of sack, and a pipe of tobacco ; a straightforward man, 
who very likely despised all high-flying notions, and only 
wished to see Government settled in such a manner as should 
have been for the good of all. Just the sort of man, says one 
writer, in commenting upon him, as would have ordered 
Maximilien Robespierre into the stocks, had he made his 
appearance talking any of his fine-spun orations, in his sky-blue 
coat, in the good old town of Taunton. 

Such was Robert Blake, when, at fifty years of age, he was 
called forth to an entirely new world of work, and from a gen- 
eral on the field to tread the deck as an admiral on the seas. 
Excellent as the service was which he had rendered as a soldier, 
we should scarcely have heard his name but that he added to 
all that had gone before the renown of a sailor whose name 
shines as an equal by the side of Drake, Nelson, Collingwood, 
and Hood ; and yet how strange it seems that he should rise to 
the rank of a first-rate English seaman after his fiftieth year ! 
strange that he should have been equal to such victorious 
fights ! — and yet, probably, in our day he would not have 
passed either a civil or an uncivil service examination. 

It has been the fashion with some writers to assert that 
Cromwell and Blake were hostile to each other. It is perfectly 
certain that the reverse was quite the case, Blake and Cromwell 
were friends ; we read of the great pair dining together at 
Cromwell's house after he became Protector. The pursuits of 
the two men were different : Blake did not trouble himself 
with governing troublesome people, his work lay in fighting 
England's enemies and maintaining England's honor on the 
seas. First we find him in conflict again with an old land foe, 
Prince Rupert, who had also betaken himself to the waters. 



i66 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

Blake followed him to the Tagus, trailing after him the Com- 
monwealth's men-of-war with their homely names of the Tiger, 
the Tenth Whelp, John, Signet ; homely vessels no doubt, but 
they succeeded in scattering Rupert's vessels with their finer 
names, and the Prince, with the fragments of his fleet, hurried 
away to the West Indies. Blake appears to have soon found 
himself as much at home inside the oak bulwarks, the black 
rigging, and the maze of masts, as behind the trenches or at 
the head of dragoons. He acquitted himself so well that the 
Council of State, after this his first expedition, made him 
Warden of the Cinque Ports. Blake became a naval reformer : 
he brought it about that his men were better paid, and received 
a more equitable distribution of prize-money ; also he appears 
to have fought for and obtained better diet for his men, good 
provisions instead of the too often rank and foul food pro- 
vided for them. It was beneath Blake's pennon that England 
first asserted the supremacy of the seas, a supremacy which she 
had soon to lower when Cromwell's pleasant successor ascended 
the English throne. We are not telling the story of Blake, 
and it is not therefore necessary that we should dwell upon the 
conflict with Holland and the Netherlands, represented by 
Blake and Van Tromp ; and when at first, off the Ness, in 
Essex, Blake was worsted, Van Tromp proclaimed himself 
master of the Channel, and passed the English coast in triumph 
with a broom at the masthead. Blake, as we know, called 
for inquiry from the State into the conduct of several of his 
captains, and with a fleet which was afterward fitted out, he 
quite retrieved the English navy from its momentary disgrace, 
and added immensely to his country's glory and fame. This 
was the occasion on which the old tradition says that Blake 
mounted a horsewhip as his standard, as he swept the Channel, 
in humorous response to Van Tromp's standard of the broom. 
But it is farther away from home we have to follow him, to 
track the splendor of his great achievements. Throughout the 
Papal States and along the coasts of the Mediterranean, the 
people trembled at the name of the heretic Admiral and his 
line of conquering ships. At Leghorn he demanded and 
obtained compensation in money for the owners of vessels that 
had been sold there by the Princes Rupert and Maurice ; then 
he demanded and received compensation from the Pope, Alex- 
ander VII., for vessels sold by the same princes in Roman 
ports ; he received on board his sixty-gun ship, the George, 
20,000 pistoles, which his demands had produced from the 
Holy See. He urged freedom of worship for Protestants on 



FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMWELL, 167 

the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; then sailed away to the coast of 
Africa to have a word with the Dey of Tunis. From him he 
demanded compensation for prizes taken from the English. 
The Dey refused ; Blake retired, put all his vessels in order, 
returned, cannonaded all the forts, and set fire to the corsair 
ships. Then away he sailed for Tripoli, where he found his 
fame had preceded him ; the Dey there was manageable ; and 
when, after this, he called in at Tunis again, he found the Dey 
of Tunis so renewed in the spirit of his mind that he was glad 
to conclude a treaty of peace to save himself from further 
molestation. In the midst of all these arduous conquests he 
was tired and ill, and he writes affectingly to the Protector, 
describing some trials his brave sailors had to bear, and lightly 
referring to his own sufferings : " Our only comfort is that we 
have a God to lean upon, although we walk in darkness, and 
see no light. I shall not trouble Your Highness with any com- 
plaints of myself, of the indisposition of my body, or troubles 
of my mind ; my many infirmities will one day, I doubt not, 
sufficiently plead for me, or against me, so that I may be free 
of so great a burden, consoling myself in the mean time in 
the Lord, and in the firm purpose of my heart, with all faith- 
fulness and sincerity, to discharge the truth reposed in me. 

Soon after this he ran home to refit and to be in more thor- 
ough readiness for the great silver fleets which were crossing 
the Atlantic from the Spanish colonies. And now followed, 
when he again set sail, his most remarkable triumphs. It was 
against those splendid Spanish galleons and India-built mer^ 
chantmen, their holds full of the choicest products of the far 
West, gold and silver, pearls and precious stones, hides, in- 
digo, cochineal, sugar, and tobacco, that he and his men set 
forth ; and abundant were the treasures of sparkling silver- 
pieces which fell into the horny hands of Blake's men. He 
made his first seizure on this venture and sent it home ; the 
bullion was conveyed to London, under the charge of soldiers, 
and eight-and-thirty wagon-loads of silver reeled along through 
the streets of London to the Tower, amid the cheerful applause 
of the multitude. Blake did not come home : he was still out 
on those distant seas waiting for, and ready to pounce upon, 
more prizes. Perhaps many of our readers will think it a dif- 
ficult thing to conceive of this warlike sailor as a God-fear- 
ing man, following up all this mischief against the Spaniards 
in the fear of the Lord ; but it was even so, not an oath was 
heard on board his vessel or vessels, the ordinances of reli- 
gion were followed up punctiliously. Why not ? he was fight- 



1^. OLIVER CROMWELL. 

ing the cause of freedom and faith against popery and absolu^ ■ 
tism, and their persecutions ; and, whereas Spain and Rome 
had made Protestants everywhere tremble, this Gustavus of 
the seas, in turn, made Spain and Rome to tremble, and per- 
haps stirred some new thoughts about Protestant heroism 
within their cruel souls. He appears to have seen plainly the 
sphere in which he had to play his part : " It is not for us," 
said he, " to mind State affairs, but to keep the foreigners 
from fooling us," and his name became as terrible to the foes 
of England on the sea as Cromwell's on the land. Numerous 
and rapid were his victories over Holland, Spain, and Portu- 
gal. It is melancholy to linger over the achievements of war- 
riors ; but it is certainly a source of pride and triumph to feel 
how the victories of Blake contributed to the peace of the 
world. He swept the Mediterranean clear of pirates, and en- 
abled the commerce of Europe and the world to perform its 
work in that day in silence and quiet and respect. The Deys of 
Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli were startled from the slumber of 
their despotism, as the noise of Blake's triumphant career 
rolled on their ears ; and great must have been the astonish- 
ment of England, and especially that part of England contained 
in the cities of London and Westminster, to behold again the 
thirty-eight wagon-loads of silver rumbling over the stones of 
the old city, all taken by Blake from the king of Spain at 
Santa Cruz, amid " whirlwinds of fire and iron hail," beneath 
the old Peak of Teneriffe. He had, before that, compelled 
the Dutch to do homage to England, as the Mistress of the 
Seas, defeating Van Tromp and De Ruyter. The Protecter 
sent him, after his last victory, a jeweled ring of the value of 
;^5oo, and great would have been the acclamation greeting 
him on his return to his native land. But it was not decreed 
that he should stand upon her shores again. He returned 
homeward, and coveted a sight of old England's shores once 
more, and once more he beheld them — and that was all. He 
expired as his fleet was entering Plymouth Sound, on the 27th 
of August, 1657. A true model of a British sailor — he died 
poor. After all his triumphs and opportunities of accumulat- 
ing wealth, he was not worth ;^5oo ! A magnificent public 
funeral, and a resting-place in Henry Vll.'s chapel was de- 
creed for him ; and there were few in the country who did 
not feel that his strength had been a mighty bulwark to the 
land. But when Charles II. returned to the country, the 
purely national glory which surrounded the memory of this 
great English hero did not exempt his body from the indecent 




FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMWELL, 169 

and inhuman indignities which were heaped upon the remains 
of the great Republicans. By the king's command the re- 
mains of this, perhaps the greatest English Admiral that ever 
walked a deck, were torn from the tomb and cast into a pit in 
St. Margaret's churchyard. "There," says Wood, "it lies, 
enjoying no other monument than what is reared by his own 
valor, which time itself can hardly deface." But even Lord 
Clarendon can not forbear a slight tribute to his memory ; he 
says of Blake : " Despising those rules which had been long 
in practice, to keep his ships and men out of danger, as if the 
principal art requisite in a naval captain had been to come 
safe home again, the was he first who brought ships to con- 
temn castles on shore, which had ever before been thought 
formidable, and taught his men to fight in fire as well as upon 
water ;" and, adds his lordship, " though he has been very 
well imitated and followed, he was the first that gave the ex- 
ample of that kind of naval courage, and bold and resolute 
achievements." 

But from Blake we return to Cromwell, and rightly to esti- 
mate his power our readers must remember that at that time 
England had never been more than a third-rate power in Eu- 
rope ; and the other nations were in the height and heat of 
their grandeur and fame. Spain, with a population of about 
thirty millions — it had declined recently, in the time of 
Charles V. its population had been about thirty-six millions, 
and the population of England at this time could not have been 
six millions — was the kingdom of the Inquisition, the chief 
land of the Romish power ,• with her continents of golden isles 
in the west, her possessions of gold in her own country ; 
haughty, defiant, and strong. Spain, Cromwell determined to 
crush. France was powerful. Only recently had she known 
the monarchy of Henry of Navarre and the statemanship of. 
Richelieu. Her destinies were now guided by the wiiiejt 
man and most fox-like statesman in Europe, Cardinal Maza- 
rin. Him Cromwell treated as a valet or a footman ; and his 
power lay humbled and stricken before the genius of the bluff 
farmer-statesman. Our readers may talk, if they will, about 
the craft and cunning of Cromwell, but his letters to Mazarin 
flow like transparent waves before the inky turbidity of that 
cuttlefish, that Sepia among statesmen. A dry humor, nay, 
sometimes a most droll humor, guides his dealings with him. 
Mazarin was, we knov/, a most miserable miser, a kind of 
griffon in threadbare wings, watching his heaps and cellars 
of g*5l(^. How well Cromwell knew him. He sent presents 



170 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

to Cromwell, we find — the richest and the stateliest presents 
of hangings and pictures and jewels. Whereupon Cromwell 
came out generously too, and sent the Frenchman what he 
knew, to his market eye, would be of more value than hang- 
ings, pictures, or books ; he sent him some tons of British tin ! 
Was it not characteristic of the shrewdness of the man ? 
The supple Mazarin never found himself so perplexed. 

Did our readers ever read the anecdote of Cromwell and 
the Quaker ? It occurs in a speech, made in the House of 
Commons in the early part of the eighteenth century, by Mr. 
Pulteney, in a debate on the complaints of the West Indian 
merchants against Spain ; and certainly it showed no ordinary 
bravery to introduce the example of Cromwell to the notice 
of kings and ministers in those days. 

" This was what Oliver Cromwell did," said the speaker, 
" in a like case, that happened during his government, and 
in a case where a more powerful nation was concerned than 
ever Spain could pretend to be. In the histories of his time 
we are told that an English merchant ship was taken in the 
chops of the Channel, carried into St. Malo, and there con- 
fiscated upon some groundless pretense. As soon as the 
master of the ship, who was an honest Quaker, got home, he 
presented a petition to the Protector in Council, setting forth 
his case, and praying for redress. Upon hearing the petition, 
the Protector told his Council he would take that affair upon 
himself, and ordered the man to attend him next morning. 
He examined him strictly as to all the circumstances of his 
case, and finding by his answers that he was a plain, honest 
man, and that he had been concerned in no unlawful trade, 
he asked him if he could go to Paris with a letter ? The man 
answered he could. ' Well, then,' says the Protector, * pre- 
pare for your journey, and come to us to-morrow morning.' 
Next morning he gave him a letter to Cardinal Mazarin, and 
told him he must stay but three days for an answer. ' The 
answer I mean,' says he, * is the full value of what you might 
have made of your ship and cargo ; and tell the Cardinal, that 
if it is not paid you in three days, you have express orders 
from me to return home.' The honest, blunt Quaker, we 
may suppose, followed his instructions to a tittle ; but the 
cardinal, according to the manner of ministers when they are 
any way pressed, began to shuffle ; therefore the Quaker re- 
turned, as he was bid. As soon as the Protector saw him, 
he asked, * Well, friend, have you got your money ? ' And 
upon the man's answering he had not, the Protector told him, 



FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMWELL, 171 

*Then leave your direction with my secretary, and you shall 
soon hear from me.' Upon this occasion that great man did 
not stay to negotiate, or to explain, by long, tedious memo- 
rials, the reasonableness of his demand. No ; though there 
was a French minister residing here, he did not so much as 
acquaint him with the story, but immediately sent a man-of- 
war or two to the Channel, with orders to seize every French 
ship they could meet with. Accordingly, they returned in a 
few days with tvv^o or three French prizes, which the Protector 
ordered to be immediately sold, and out of the produce he 
paid the Quaker what he demanded for his ship and cargo. 
Then he sent for the French minister, gave him an account 
of what had happened, and told him there was a balance, 
which, if. he pleased, should be paid in to him, to the end that 
he might deliver it to those of his countrymen, who were the 
owners of the French ships that had been so taken and 
sold." =* 

Cromwell never assumed the title of "Defender of the 
Faith," but, beyond all princes of Europe, he was the bulwark 
and barrier against the cruelties of Rome. In all the persecu- 
tions of the French Protestants, how nobly his conduct con- 
trasts with that of Elizabeth upon the occasion of the massacre 
of the St. Bartholomew ! She received the embassador, but 
Cromwell wrung from the persecutors aid and help for the 
victims. 

The Duke of Savoy raised a new persecution of the 
Vaudois ; many were massacred, and the rest driven from their 
habitations: whereupon Cromwell sent to the French Court, 
demanding of them to oblige that duke, whom he knew to be 
in their power, to put a stop to this unjust fury, or otherwise 
he must break with them. The cardinal objected to this as 
unreasonable ; he would do good offices, he said, but could not 
answer for the effects. However, nothing would satisfy the 
Protector till they obliged the duke to restore all he had taken 
from his Protestant subjects, and to renew their former privi- 
leges. Cromwell wrote on this occasion to the duke himself, 
ai)d by mistake omitted the title of " Royal Highness " on his 
letter ; upon which the major part of the council of Savoy 
were for returning it unopened. But one of them, representing 
that Cromwell would not pass by such an affront, but would 
certainly lay Villa granca in asiies and set the Swiss Cantons 
on Savoy, the letter was read, and, with the cardinal's influ- 

♦ Any person desirous of authenticating this tinily remarkable instance will find it 
by referring back to *he Parliamentary Debates of the period. 



X72 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

ence, had the desired success. The Protector also raised money 
in England for the poor sufferers, and sent over an agent to 
settle all their affairs. He was moved to tears when he heard 
of the sufferings of the people of the valleys. He sent imme- 
diately the sum of ;^2coo from his own purse to aid the exiles, 
He appointed a day of humiliation to be held throughout the 
kingdom, and a general collection on their behalf. The people 
heartily responded to his call, and testified their sympathy with 
their distressed- brethren by raising the sum of ;^4o,ooo for 
distribution among them. 

At another time there appeared a tumult at Nismes, wherein 
some disorder had been committed by the Huguenots. They 
being apprehensive of severe proceedings upon it, sent one 
over, with great expedition and secrecy, to desire Cromwell's 
intercession and protection. This express found so good a 
reception that Cromwell the same evening dispatched a letter 
to the Cardinal, with one indorsed to the king; also instruc- 
tions to his embassador, Lockhart, requiring him either to pre- 
vail for a total immunity of that misdemeanor, or immediately 
to come away. At Lockhart's application the disorder was 
overlooked ; and though the French Court complained of this 
way of proceeding as a little too imperious, yet the necessity 
of their affairs made them comply. This Lockhart, a wise and 
gallant man, who was Governor of Dunkirk and embassador at 
the same time, and in high favor with the Protector, told 
Bishop Burnet that when he was sent afterward, as embassador 
by King Charles, he found he had nothing of that regard that 
was paid to him in Cromwell's time. Had Cromwell been on 
the throne of England when Louis XIV. dared to revoke what 
had been called the Irrevocable Edict of Nantes, and by this 
act to inaugurate a protracted and horrible reign of terror, the 
revocation would never have taken place ; or that apparition, 
which Mazarin always dreaded lest he should see, would have 
been beheld — namely, Cromwell at the gates of Paris. 

There was yet a further design, veiy advantageous to the 
Protestant cause, wherewith Cromwell intended to have be- 
gun his kingship, had he taken it upon him ; and that was 
the instituting a council for the Protestant religions, in oppo- 
sition to the Congregation de Propaganda Fide at Rome. This 
body was to consist of seven councilors, and four secretaries 
for different provinces. The secretaries jjeie to have ;^5oo 
salary apiece, to keep correspondence everywhere. Ten 
thousand pounds a year was to be a fund for ordinary emer- 
gencies*, further supplies were to be provided as occasions 



FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMl^I'^' '75 

required ; and Chelsea College, then an old rui.Si"eat British 
was to be fitted up for their reception. This wal^^ bravery, 
sign, and worthy of the man who had formed it. ' mountain 

It was at the very period of the massacre of tli°".^^!^ 
montese, that a treaty with France had been maturecl^^^^^^ 
long and tedious negotiation. One demand after anr °^ 
had been conceded to Cromwell by Louis and his crafty""^^ 
viser, the Cardinal Mazarin. John Milton, Oliver's Priva'^^ 
and Foreign Secretary, had conducted the negotiation to l 
successful issue, and the French embassador waited with the 
treaty ready for signature, when Cromwell learned of the suf- 
ferings of the Vai'-dois. He forthwith dispatched an embas- 
sador, on their behalf, to the Court of Turin, and refused to 
sign the treaty with France until their wrongs were redressed. 
The French embassador was astonished and indignant. He 
remonstrated with Cromwell, and urged that the question bore 
no connection with the terms of the treaty; nor could his 
sovereign interfere, on any plea, with the subjects of an inde- 
pendent State. Mazarin took even bolder ground. He did 
not conceal his sympathy with the efforts of the Duke of 
Savoy to coerce these Protestant rebels — declared his con- 
viction that in truth " the Vaudois had inflicted a hundred 
times worse cruelties on the Catholics than they had suffered 
from them ; " and altogether took up a very high and haughty 
position. Cromwell remained unmoved. New protestations 
met with no better reception. He told his majesty of France, 
in reply to his assurances of the impossibility of interfering, 
that he had already allowed his own troops to be employed 
as the tools of the persecutors ; which, though very much like 
giving hir Christian Majesty the lie, was not without its effect. 
Cromwell would not move from the sacred duty he had as- 
sumed to himself, as the defender of the persecuted Prot- 
est:ints of E-:rope. The French embassador applied for an 
audience to take his leave, and was made welcome to go. 
Louis and Mazarin had both to yield to his wishes at last, 
and became the unwilling advocates of the heretics of the 
valleys. 

Indeed, of the v.i^xle foreign policy of Cromwell, in which 
Milton bore so conspicuous a share, a very slight sketch may 
suffice. It is altogether such as every Englishman may be 
proud of. Not an iota of the honors due to a crowned head 
would he dispense with when negotiating, as the Protector of 
England, with the proudest monarchs of Europe. Spain 
yielded with Httle hesitation, to accord to him the same style 



X72 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

ence, had the r'd by her own haughty monarchs ; but Louis of 
in England f/ht, if possible, some compromise. His first let- 
settle all tiddressed to " His Most Serene Highness Oliver, 
of the si-rotector," etc., but Cromwell refused to receive it. 
diately-iore familiar title of " Cousin," was in like manner re- 
He a^d, and Louis and his crafty minister, the Cardinal Maz- 
kinm, were compelled to concede to him the wonted mode of 
he^idress between sovereigns : " To our Dear Brother Oliver." 
t^' What ! " exclaimed Louis to his minister, " shall I call this 
base fellow my brother } " " Aye," rejoined his astute ad- 
viser, " or your father, if it will gain your ends, or you will 
have him at the gates of Paris ! " 

Again, when those of the Valley of Lucerne had unwarily 
rebelled against the Duke of Savoy, which gave occasion to the 
Pope and the neighboring princes of Italy to call and solicit for 
their extirpation, and their prince had positively resolved upon 
it, Cromwell sent his agent to the Duke of Savoy, a prince with 
whom he had no correspondence or commerce, _and also 
engaged the Cardinal, and even terrified the Pope himself, 
without so much as doing any grace to the EngUsh Roman 
Catholics (nothing being more usual than his saying, " that 
his ships in the Mediterranean should visit Civita Vecchia, and 
that the sound -of his cannon should be heard in Rome "), that 
the Duke of Savoy thought it neccessary to restore all he had 
taken from them, and did renew all those privileges they had 
formerly enjoyed and newly forfeited. 

" Cromwell," says a celebrated writer, " would never suffer 
himself to be denied anything he ever asked of the Cardinal, 
alleging, * tha-t people would be otherwise dissatisfied ; ' which 
the Cardinal bore very heavily, and complained of to those 
with whom he would be free. One day he visited Madame 
Turenne ; and when he took his leave of her, she, according to 
her custom, besought him to continue gracious to the churches. 
Whereupon the Cardinal told her ' that he knew not how to 
behave himself : if he advised the king to punish and suppress 
their insolence, Cromwell threatened him to join with the 
Spaniard ; and if he showed any favor to them, at Rome 
they accounted him a heretic' " 

The proceedings the Cardinal did adopt leave no room to 
doubt the conclusion he finally arrived at, as to whether it was 
most advisable to attend to the threats of the Pope of Rome or 
of the Lord Protector of England. 

The prince who bears the closest resemblance to Cromwell is 
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He, too, was the lion of the 



FOREIGN POLICY OF CROMWELL. 175 

Protestant cause, and his camp, like that of the great British 
farmer, was the scene of piety and extraordinary bravery. 
Like Cromwell, he was rapid, and irresistible as a mountain 
torrent, on the field. Like Cromwell, he alarmed the councils 
of the Roman Pontiff and struck terror into the Imperialist 
cabinet. Far. inferior to Cromwell — for who of all generals or 
statesmen equaled him ? — yet both regarded themselves as set 
apart and consecrated for the defense of Protestanism against 
the encroachments and cruelties of Popery. This idea largely 
entered into the mind of the Protector. He saw the state of 
Europe ; he felt for its wrung and lacerated condition. In his 
age he was the only Protestant prince ; the so-called Protestant 
statesmen were in league with Rome. He raised his banner 
against the Vatican, declared his side and his convictions, and 
made the tyrants and diplomatists of Europe quail and shrink 
before the shadow of his power and the terror of his name. 
In the history of Protestantism he occupies the distinguished 
place, in the very foreground. That we are entitled to say 
thus much of him is proved by a reference to his own words, 
as well as to the better evidence of his deeds. 

Nor must we fail to glance at the sea. During the time of 
Charles, pirates infested our own coast, scoured Devonshire 
and the Channel. Beneath the Protectorate things were 
speedily amended. The guns of the enemy rolled no more 
round the British coast till Cromwell was dead and Charles 
Stuart came back ; and then, indeed, even London herself 
heard them thundering up the Medway and the Thames. 
Turks, pirates, and corsairs, these were swept away of course ; 
but in those days Spain herself was but a kingdom of robbers 
and buccaneers. Waves of old golden romance ; what imag- 
ination does not kindle over the stories of the Spanish Main! 
The power of Spain was there ; Spain, the bloodiest power of 
Europe ; Spain, the land of the Inquisition ; Spain, the dis- 
graced, degraded; land of every superstition. Against her 
Cromwell declared war. Alliance with France, hostility to 
Spain, and we have seen how the immortal Blake and his fire- 
ships scoured those distant seas. That great sea-king ! Have 
we not seen the action of the Port of Santa Cruz, beneath the 
Peak of Teneriffe ? — the thundering whirlwinds of fire and 
flying iron hail. Sixteen war-ships, full of silver, all safely 
moored, as it seemed, in that grand castellated and unassailable 
bay ; the whole eight castles, a very Sevastopol there ! See 
Blake entering beneath that living thunder, all starting from its 
sleep ; see him, with his ship silencing the castles, sinking the 



176 OLIVER CROMWELL.. 

mighty gun-ships, and sailing quietly from Santa Cruz bay 
again. Those were the days, too, in which Oliver possessed 
England of Jamaica, and asserted the right of England, also, in 
those seas. It was thus that His Highness grappled with the 
Spanish Antichrist; and it must be admitted that Spanish 
Antichrist has never been, from the day of Cromwell to this 
hour, what it was before. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE LAST DAYS OF CROMWELL, 

" Yet is their strength labor and sorrow ; " this, after all, 
must be said even of this great and most successful man. 
Our conception of him is such that we can well believe he 
longed to be at rest. It was an amazing work, that in which 
he was the actor ; but with what toil and endurance and sleep- 
less energy had he to travail day and night ! The honor of 
knighthood and ;^5oo a year forever was offered by a procla- 
mation, by Charles Stuart, from his vile, ragged, and filthy 
Court in Paris, to any who would take the life of the Protec- 
tor ; and there were many in England who longed to see the 
mighty monarch dethroned. In his palace chambers lived 
his noble mother, nearly ninety, now trembling at every sound, 
lest it be some ill to her noble and royal son. 

We are not surprised at the absence of much that seems, to 
our minds, happiness in those last days. The higher we go, 
brother, in the great kingdom of duty, the less we must expect 
to enjoy, apparently, in the picturesque villages of happiness. 
Ah ! but the sense iDrightens and sweetens within ; for there 
are they " who taste and see that the Lord is good." " Do 
you not see," says our anti-Cromwell friend, " a divine com- 
pensation in this unhappiness of Cromwell ? " No, we do 
not. What, in his old age was Baxter happier ? or Vane ? or 
were the last days of Owen more sweetly soothed? On the 
contrary. Weak Richard Cromwell — who does nothing — 
steps into the by-lanes of life, and goes serenely off the stage. 
Would you rather, then, be Richard than Oliver ? — rather 
have Richard's quiet than Oliver's unrest ? It is well to 
sigh for calm ; but to sigh for it, indeed, we must deserve it. 
Easy it is for us who do nothing worth calling a deed, to take 
our Rhine journeys, to stand in Venice, or to see the broad 



THE LAST DA YS OF CROMWELL, \ 177 

sun shine on ns from Ben Mucdhui or Loch Lomond, or the 
moon rise over Grasmere. But men who have done a 
thousand times over our work never know that hour of rest. 
What then, they are rewarded better than we are, and shall 
be ! No, thou caitiff, coward Royalist ! Say not to us, " See, 
here is the life thou callest a brave one going out in ashes. 
What is Oliver, the just and the holy, belter than I, with my 
songs, and my harlots, and' my dice ?" And we say, " Thou 
poor, halt, and maimed rascal, he is every way better ; for he 
has peace." Oh, doubtless, then, the hard rough hand of the 
old Marston and Naseby soldier would take once more the 
gentle hand of Elizabeth, clasped tightly thirty-eight years 
ago ; floods of tenderness would come over him as they come 
over all such men. In those last days it was that he said to 
his Parliament, "There is not a man living can say I sought 
this place — not a man or woman living on English ground. I 
can say in the presence of God, in comparison with whom we 
are like creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been 
glad to have lived under my woodside, and have kept a flock 
of sheep, rather than have undertaken such a government as 
this." Yes ; you can see him there, in the great, stately 
palace, in some quiet room, talking with Elizabeth over the 
old, free, healthy, quiet days at Huntington, and St. Ives, and 
Ely, and Ramsay — days surely, never to be known again un- 
til the deeper quiet of eternity is reached. Do you not sym- 
pathize with that quiet, timid, lady-like wife, in her dove-like 
beauty, trembling near the eagle heart of her great husband, 
and wondering, " When he is gone, what will, what can be- 
come of me ? " As we walk in fancy through the old palace 
chambers, we think many such things about them. 

Death threw his shadov/ over Oliver's palace before he 
broke in. The following of Thurloe is touching : " My Lord 
Protector's mother, of ninety-four years old, died last night. 
A little before her death she gave my lord her blessing in 
these words : ' The Lord cause His face to shine upon you, 
and comfort you in all your adversities, and enable you to do 
great things for the glory of your most high God, and to be a 
relief unto His people. My dear son, I leave my heart with 
thee. Good-night.'" '^ Takefi from the evU to come !"' One is 
glad she went first, before the great change. Then his heart 
was shaken by the death of the Lady Elizabeth, his beloved 
daughter, Mrs. Claypoie. This broke down his heart. Her 
long illness; his tenderness, as father, so extreme ; his con- 
stant watching by her side, the spectator of her violent con- 

13 



178 OLIVER CkK^xffWELL. 

vulsive fits : the strong soldier, who had ridden his war-charger 
conquering over so many fields, bowed before the blow when 
her death came. 

And therefore, only a few days after, when he was seized 
with illness at Hampton Court, he felt that it was for death ; 
and that death-bed is one of the most profoundly memorable, 
even as that liffe was one of the most illustrious and glorious. 
But it was more than the death-bed of a hero; it was the 
death-bed of a Christian. In that death-chamber prayers — 
deep, powerful, long — went up, and men sought to lay hold 
on God that he might spare him ; but, says one, " We could 
not be more desirous he should abide than he was content 
and willing to be gone. He called for his Bible, and desired 
an honorable and godly person there, with others present, to 
read unto him that passage in Phil. iv. 11-13 : 'Not that I 
speak in respect of want : for I have learned, in whatsoever 
state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be 
abased, and I know how to abound : everywhere and in all 
things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both 
to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me.' Which read, said he, to use 
his own words as near as we can remember them, ' This 
Scripture did once save my life, when my eldest son, poor 
Oliver, died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed it 
did.' And then, repeating the words of the text himself, and 
reading the tenth and eleventh verses, of St. Paul's content- 
ment and submission to the will of God in all conditions, 
said he, ' It's true, Paul, you have learned this, and attained 
to this measure of grace ; but what shall I do ? Ah, poor 
creature, it is a hard lesson for me to take out ! I find it so.' 
But reading on to the thirteenth verse, where Paul saith, * I 
can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,' 
then faith began to work, and his heart to find support and 
comfort, and he said thus to himself, ' He that was Paul's 
Christ is my Christ too ; ' and so ' he drew water out of the 
wells of salvation.' " 

" Oliver, we find," says Carlyle, " spoke much of * the 
covenants,' which, indeed, are the grand axes of all, in that 
Puritan universe of his. Two covenants ; one of works, with 
fearful judgment for our shortcomings therein, one of grace, 
with unspeakable mercy ; gracious engagements, covenants 
which the eternal God has vouchsafed to make with his 
feeble creature, man. Two — and by Christ's death they 
have become one — there, for Oliver, is the divine solution of 



THE LAST DA YS OF CROMWELL, 179 

this our mystery of life. * They were two,' he was heard 
ejaculating — ' but put into one before the foundation of the 
world 1 ' And again : * It is holy and true, it is holy and 
true, it is holy and true ! Who made it holy and true ? 
The Mediator of the covenant.' And again : ' The covenant 
is but one. Faith in the covenant is my only support, and, 
if I believe not, He abides faithful.' When his wife and 
children stood weeping round him, he said, ' Love not this 
world ! ' 'I say unto you, it is not good that you should 
love this world ! ' No. ' Children, live like Christians ; I 
leave you the covenant to feed upon ! ' Yes, my brave one, 
even so. The covenant, and eternal soul of covenants, 
remains sure to all the faithful ; deeper than the foundations 
of this world, earlier than they, and more lasting than they." 

" Look also at the following : dark hues and bright ; im- 
mortal light beams struggling amid the black vapors of death. 
Look, and conceive a great sacred scene, the sacredest this 
world sees — and think of it ; do not speak of it in these 
mean days which have no sacred word. ' Is there none that 
says. Who will deliver me from this peril ? ' moaned he once. 
Many hearts are praying, O wearied one ! * Man can do 
nothing,' rejoins he : ' God can do what He will' Another 
time, again thinking of the covenant, ' Is there none, that 
will come and praise God, whose mercies endure forever .? ' " 

Here also are ejaculations caught up at intervals, undated, 
in those final days. " Lord, thou knowest, if I do desire to 
live, it is to show forth Thy praise and to declare Thy 
works ! " Once he was heard saying, " It is a fearful thing 
to fall into the hands of the living God ! " " This was 
spoken three times," says Maidstone, " his repetitions usually 
being very weighty, and with great vehemency of spirit." 
Thrice over he said this, looking into the eternal kingdoms. 
But again : " All the promises of God are in Him yea, and 
in Him amen ; to the glory of God by us in Jesus Christ." 
" The Lord hath filled me with as much assurance of His 
pardon and His love as my soul can hold." " I think I am 
the poorest wretch that lives ; but I love God, or rather am 
beloved of God." " I am a conqueror," and more than a con- 
queror, through Christ that strengtheneth me ! " 

On the 30th of August, however (having in the interim 
been removed from Hampton Court to Whitehall), he had 
so far changed his sentiments as to think it necessary to 
declare his eldest son Richard his successor in the Pro- 
tectorate. And, on the evening before his departure, in the 



x8o OLIVER CROMWELL. 

same doubtful temper of mind, though still greatly supported 
by his enthusiasm, he uttered the following prayer : 

" Lord, although I am a wretched and miserable creature, 
I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I may, I will, 
come unto Thee for my people. Thou hast made me a 
mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service ; 
and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though 
others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, 
however Thou dost dispose of me, continue to go on, and do 
good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one 
heart, and mutual love ; and go on to deliver them, and 
with the work of reformation, and make the name of Christ 
glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon 
Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon 
such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for 
they are Thy people too ; and pardon the folly of this short 
prayer, for Jesus Christ His sake, and give us a good night 
if it be Thy pleasure." 

It was the 3d of September, 1658, the anniversary of his 
famous battles of Dunbar and Worcester ; a day always cele- 
brated by rejoicings in honor of these important victories. 
When the sun rose Oliver was speechless, and between three 
and four o'clock in the afternoon he expired. God shattered 
all his strength on this festival of his glory and his triumphs. 

The sorrow of the Protector's friends and of the majority 
of the nation can not be described. *' The consternation and 
astonishment of all people," wrote Fauconberg to Henry 
Cromwell, " are inexpressible ! their hearts seem as if sunk 
within them. And if it was thus abroad, your lordship may 
imagine what it was in the family of His Highness and other 
near relations. My poor wife (Mary, Oliver's third daughter), 
I know not what in the earth to do with her. When seem- 
ingly quieted, she bursts out again into passions that tear her 
ver}' heart in pieces ; nor can I blame her, considering what 
she has lost. It fares little better with others. God, I 
trust, will sanctify this bitter cup to us all." *' I am not able 
to speak or write," said Thurloe. "This stroke is so sore, so 
unexpected, the providence of God is so stupendous ; consid- 
ering the person that has fallen, the time and season wherein 
God took him away, with other circumstances, I can do noth- 
ing but put my mouth in the dust and say, It is the Lord. . . 
It is not to be said what affliction the army and the people 
show to his late Highness; his name is already precious. 
Never was there any man so prayed for." 



THE LAST DA YS OF CROMWELL, i8l 

" Hush 1 poor weeping Mary," says Carlyle, after reading 
the foregoing extract ; here is a life-battle right nobly done, 
Seest thou not 

" The storm has changed into a calm 
At his command and will ; 
So that the waves which raged before, 
Now quiet are and still 1 

* Then are they glad, because at rest. 
And quiet now they be ; 
So to the haven he them brings, 
Which they desired to see." 

" * Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord/ Blessed 
are the valiant they have lived in the Lord. ' Amen,' saith 
the spirit, Amen ! They ' rest from their labors, and their 
works do follow them.' " 

And what is the verdict upon all these amazing faculties of 
mind ? Mr. Forster says, " They failed in their mission 
upon earth." Failed ! then Gustavus at Lutzen failed ; 
then every martyr in every age has failed. No 1 we 
will not call that life a failure. It was success ; it was 
success in itself, and in what followed it. Cromwell has 
been called the armed soldier of democracy. No, he was 
not that ; he was the armed soldier of Puritanism. His 
knighthood was religious ; and if you judge him accurately, 
he bears just the same relation to the consolidation and 
settlement of our constitution that William the Conqueror 
bears to the consolidation and settlement of feudalism. 
Oliver the Conqueror, in himself, and in what he marks, is 
an epoch in the development of English law. 

Ci-omwell was the greatest and most illustrious instance of 
reaction, in the great and rising middle-class, against feudal 
tyranny. The contest was carried on between the king and 
his people alone. In other and not less deserving agitations 
the cause of tyranny had received aid from neighboring 
monarchs ; in this case the battle was fought by the repre- 
sentatives of the soil alone. The struggles of the Nether- 
lands, beneath leaders whose power and eloquence and 
sagacity have been the subjects of romance and poetry, from 
that time to this hour, were unsuccessful ; but not unsuccess- 
ful were we. 

It is mournful that every cihapter of constitutional law has 
been inaugurated by the sword. The sword of Cromwell 
alone gave victory to the people over the king in the first 



l82 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

days of the contest. Had not those victories been obtained, 
this land would have been at the feet of a cold and cruel 
tyrant. The king's nature was so well known that his friends 
dreaded a victory upon his side. The country would have 
been one widespread scene of decimation and attainder. 
Victory on the banners of Charles would have sealed the 
enslavement of our land for long ages. When the will of the 
king became -the tyrannizer of the country, and over the 
whole population of the land there seemed to be no hope for 
enfranchisement or escape, then Cromwell arose — as Prince 
Arthur by the side of the enchanted lake beheld suddenly 
arise the hand bearing the sword, the good sword of Excali- 
bur. So law was beaten down. When in Church and State 
spreads one wide waste of desolation, then, out of the ranks 
of the people, arose Cromwell ! You may refuse his monu- 
ment a niche in the House of Lords ; you may allow his 
name to be cast out. It matters not ; he marks an era in 
the history of English law ! In the next generation, the tide of 
tyranny arose again, and beat in storms upon the people. It 
matters not! William I. does not more surely mark an 
epoch in the history of England than Cromwell does ; his 
memory and his name tower aloft over the ages. Read his 
deeds, and you will find that while he conquered he defined 
the new and enlarged limits of English representation. He 
conquered Great Britain and Ireland, and united both in one 
peaceful government. He indicated the destiny of the West 
Indies. A born child of justice and of rectitude, he glanced 
along all the headlands of unrighteousness, and declared their 
corruption and their ruin. He shivered absolutism, while 
making himself the most absolute prince. He broke the 
wand of feudalism and cast it into the deep sea. 

We will leave him now. They gave him a magnificent 
funeral in the old Abbey, where they had buried Blake and 
the Protector's mother. But when Charles Stuart returned, 
the bodies were taken up and buried at Tyburn, the head of 
Cromwell exposed over Westminster Hall. The dastards 
and the fools ! But, after all, it is not certain that the body 
buried in the Abbey was his body. In a rare old volume we 
have, one hundred and sir.ty years old, it is confidently 
asserted, on the authority of the nurse of Cromwell, that he 
was privately buried by night in the Thames, in order to 
avert the indignities which it was foreseen would be 
wreaked on his body ; and this by his own direction. Other 
rumors assign another spot to his burial. Ah, well ; it 



THE LAST DA YS OF CROMWELL. 183 

matters little. We know where his v/ork is, and how far that 
is buried. We see him standing there, ushering in a new 
race of English kings. True, as Rufus or Henry Beauclerc 
seemed to carry England no further in the career of progress 
than before the Norman accession, so, in the mad cruelty of 
the succeeding kings to Cromwell, all seemed lost. But no ! 
He was the breakwater of tyranny. By his Parliament we 
have seen he amended English representation. He held 
aloft in his hand the charter to guide, he knew he could not 
give. Show us almost any act of legislative greatness, and 
we will show it you as anticipated by Cromwell. Of course 
there was a wild outbreak and outcry when Charles came 
from Dover to London, and blazing bonfires, and maypoles, 
and fireworks, and garlands, inaugurating a new despotism ; 
not the despotism of God and goodness, not the despotism 
of power and majesty, but the despotism of lust and licen- 
tiousness, of cruelty and cowardice, of fraud and intolerance, 
of Nell Gwynne and Castlemaine and Portsmouth ; and good 
men gave up all for lost. But that royal monarch whose 
bones had been insulted, and whose memory had been 
cursed, he was not dead ! Even Clarendon was compelled 
to contrast his royal master's throne with that ungarnished 
one ; and men who, like Baxter, had only irritated and 
annoyed and weakened his Government by their bilious 
maundering, threw back glances of sadness to those days, 
and thought and spoke of their lost happiness with a sigh. 
Of Baxter this is especially .true, and it is representatively 
true. We always feel, after reading his irritable attempts to 
annoy the Government of the great Protector during his life, 
that there is a fine but a just compensation in the tones in 
which he bewails the dead Protector's memory, and the decency 
and order of England in that departed day ; not to speak of 
his own arrest and trial, and the attempts made by the wicked 
Jeffries upon the honor and life of the venerable old saint. 

But the shadow of the. great Protector was over the land 
still. Tear him limb from limb — behead him — affix his head 
to any gibbet — you can not get rid of his work so. He failed, 
says Mr. Forster ! 

" They never fail who die in a great cause. 
The block may soak their gore, 
Their head be strung to city gates or castle walls, 
But still their spirit walks abroad 1 " 

As the mad voluptuary rode down to the House, did he 
never gaze up to the head he believed to ^e his pow^iful 



i84 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

conqueror's, and see in the scowl of the skeleton skull the 
avenging genius of the country, whose holy altars he had 
profaned, and whose rights he had outraged ? The mind of 
Cromwell was abroad, and the genius of freedom, as repre- 
sented by him, conquered once more. 

But now, for the present, we leave him, to our imagination, 
calm in his uncrowned majesty; surrounded by his iilustrious 
compatriots; friend and fellovz-laborer of Hampden and 
Pym ; of Selden and of Hale ; whose friendly hand employed 
and fostered the genius of Milton and of Marvell ; whose holy 
hours were solaced by the sacred converse of Owen and of 
Howe, of Manton and of Goodwyn and Caryl ; whose strong 
arm shielded his own land ; whose awful spirit overshadowed 
with fear the greatest nations and greatest statesmen of 
his age; by whose command Blake dashed in pieces the 
scepter of Spain, and bowed even the nobility of Holland. 
Some there are who find a fitting comparison between his 
deeds and those of some despots of later date. As well 
compare rats to lions. For around his name so distinct an 
aureole of light gathers, that we shall refuse to see the justice 
of the comparison with even the greatest statesmen of 
antiquity. And while we rejoice that the exigency of our 
nation, since his age, has not needed such a man, we shall 
see m him, and his appearance, a Providence not less 
distinct than that which scattered the Armada; which maps 
out the great predispositions and predestinations of history ; 
-which gave us an English birth ; which disposes all great 
events, and his resources of great men to answer and bless 
a people's prayer. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

CROMWELL'S CONTEMPORARIES : SIR HARRY VANE. 

The name of Sir Harry Vane is better kno^vn to the greater 
number of English readers, probably, from Cromwell's well- 
known ejaculation when he was dissolving the Long Parlia- 
ment, than from any other association. His life has not been 
often written, his works Jiave not been reprinted, and, of the 
great statesmen of the age to which he belonged, his name is 
perhaps the most seldom proaounced. Wordsworth has in- 
deei^ jngjuded hini iii Jiis famous sonnet — 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR HARRY VANE, ' X85- 

* Great men have been among us ; hands that penned 
And tongues that uttered wisdom— better none : 
The later Sidney, Marvell, Harrington, 
Young Vane^ and others who called Milton friend. 

Especially the lovers of true freedom should treat reverently 
the name of Vane ; it should be had in everlasting remem- 
brance No character of his times is more consistent ; it was 
elevated by the beauty of holiness. We have no doubt that 
his views were far too ideal and abstract for practical states- 
manship ; he demanded too much from human nature beneath 
the influence of other principles ; there was very much of the 
crochetiness and impossibility of Baxter in him, but no man 
was more elevated and unselfish in all his aims. It would be 
difficult to find a character so confessedly unselfish. He was, 
in an eminent degree, possessed of that virtue we denominate 
magnanimity i his views were great, his plans were great, and 
he was prepared to a corresponding self-sacrifice in order to 
realize and achieve them. 

While this was the case— while in a most true and compre- 
hensive sense he was a Christian, and while Christianity was to 
him not an intellectual system of barren speculative opinions— 
he was so unfortunate as to be only, in his life, a target for 
malignity to shoot its sharp arrows at; and since his martyr- 
domf or murder, men like Dr. Manton and Cotton Mather, 
who might have been expected to treat his name with tender- 
ness, have been among his maligners. The account of him by 
Baxter is in that excellent man's usual vein of narrowness and 
bitterness when writing of those whose opinions were adverse 
to his own. He is only a " fanatic democrat,' almost a 
papist, and quite a juggler; while Hume, when he comes to 
toiich upon his life and writings, only finds them ' absolutely 
unintelligible" (it is not necessary to suppose that he had 
ever looked at or attempted to read one of them) " exhibiting 
no traces of eloquence or common sense." While Clarendon 
was only able to sneer at him, and at his memory, as " a per- 
fect enthusiast, and, without doubt, did believe himself in- 
spired." "Anthony Wood," as Forster says, " foams at the 
mouth" (there was much of the mad dog in that Wood) when 
he even mentions him. " In sum, he was the Proteus of his 
times, a mere hotch-potch of religion, a chief ringleader of all 
the frantic sectarians, of a turbulent spirit and a working bram, 
of a ctrong composition of choler and melancholy, an inventor 
not only of whimseys in religion, but also of crotchets in the 
State (as his several models testify), and composed only ot 



ig6 OLIVER CROMWJELL. 

treason, ingratitude, and baseness." Glad should \v^ have 
been had Mr. John Forster done for the memory of Sir Harry 
Vane what he has done for that of Sir John Eliot. From a 
load of calumny and misrepresentation heaped over his mur- 
dered remains, it is the duty of all who reverence the rights of 
conscience to relieve his name. Few of those v/ho have as- 
cended the scaffold for freedom deserve more fervent and af- 
fectionate regards at the hands of those they have blessed by 
their heroism than he. Perhaps few of the innumerable travel- 
ers who turn aside to walk through Raby Woods, or to survey 
the magnificent masses of Raby Castle, the great northern 
seat of the Duke of Cleveland, call to mind the fact that he 
is the lineal descendant of that Vane who, for maintaining 
precisely that which gave to the peer a dukedom, with all its 
heraldries, expiated that which was in his age an offensive 
crime by losing his head on Tower Hill. 

We have been unable, with any satisfaction, to discover 
whether the patriot was born in Raby Castle ; but the only 
worthy likeness we have seen of him hangs in the recess in the 
beautiful drawing-room there. There, no doubt, many of his 
days were passed; it was his patrimony and inheritance; 
thence he issued several of those tracts which startled, even if 
they did not enlighten, his contemporaries ; thence especially 
issued his famous " Healing Question," which so aroused the 
ire of Cromwell. 

His father, the elder Sir Harry Vane, was the first of his 
family who possessed Raby Castle ; he does not commend him- 
self much to any higher feelings of our nature. The mother 
of Vane was a Darcey, and his name mingles with some of the 
noblest families cf England. His father was high in favor at 
Court ; but very early it became manifest that the son, neither 
in the affairs of Church or State, was likely to follow the pre- 
scriptions of mere tradition and authority. At the age of 
fourteen or fifteen, he says on his trial, " God was pleased to lay 
the foundation or groundwork of repentance in me, for the 
bringing me home to Himself by His wonderful rich and free 
grace, revealing His Son in me, that, by the knowledge of the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent, I might, 
even while here in the body, be made partaker of eternal life, 
in the first fruits of it." He studied at Westminster School, 
then at Magdalen College, Oxford; then he traveled in 
France, and spent some time in Geneva. What was wanting 
to confirm the impressions he had received was given to him 
there ; he came home to perplex and astonish his father, who 



CONTEMP.ORARIES: SIR HARRY VANE, 187 

was simply a vain vacillating courtier, only desirous to stand 
well with whatever might be likely to pay best. Laud took 
the young recusant in hand, we may believe with astonishing 
results ; exactly what we might conceive from an interview of 
calm, clear reason, with that ridiculous old archprelatical ab- 
surdity. Vane sought the home and the counsels of Pym. 
If the lawyer was not likely to help or to deepen his purely 
religious convictionfi, at any rate he would not interfere with 
them ; while the touch of his political wisdom would be like a 
spark of purifying fire upon his mind, consuming all the false 
and confusing notions which must inevitably have sought to 
nestle there beneath such an influence as that his father would 
seek to exercise over him. He went to America. Bold in 
conception, with a rich, only too dreamy imagination, perhaps 
little prognosticating the strange career through which England 
was to pass, impatient of conventionalities, sick to the soul 
of the divisions and heart-burnings of the Church, forecasting 
and dreading the ambition of Strafford, and the cruel, narrow 
resolution of the king ; the wretched superstition of Laud, 
rocking to and fro in his old Gothic chair of abuses, like an 
Archimage with his dim blear eyes ; — it seemed natural to the 
young man that America should furnish him with all he needed. 
America was the hope of the world then. It was the sanc- 
tuary and the shrine of freedom, especially of free faith and 
opinion. The young dreamer reached Boston early in 1635, 
and was admitted to the freedom of Massachusetts on the 3d 
of March in the same year, and he became Governor of Massa- 
chusetts the following year. He was but a youth in years, but 
the creed of his future life was remarkably brought out and 
illustrated in the story of his government. It was a brief 
period too, for he took his passage home in August, 1637. 
He did not, as Richard Baxter so wrongly says, steal away by 
night, but he stepped on board openly, with marks of honor 
from his friends ; large concourses of people followed him to 
the ship with every demonstration and mark of esteem, and 
parting salutes were fired from the town and castle. He, no 
doubt, found the dreams he had entertained when he set foot 
on those shores dissolve ; who has not known such dreams 
and such dissolutions 1 There was little space for freedom of 
opinion to thrive in there ; his great thought of and faith in 
universal toleration was intolerable, even to many of the no- 
blest people of that age, and especially to the ruling minds of 
Massachusetts. Vane, even in those earliest years, when he was 
getting his harness on, was clear in his perceptions of the 



x88 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

rights of the human soul. We do not enter here into the inci- 
dents of his government of the young colony ; we do not even 
touch upon his conduct with reference to his vindication of 
Mrs. Hutchinson, a proceeding which brought him so severe a 
measure of reprehension then and after. We believe he was 
nobly right, and only fn advance of his age. He, no doubt, 
learned much in the period of his residence in New England 
v/hich fitted him for service on a larger and far more important 
field. A nobler career awaited him very shortly after his re- 
turn. 

After a short period of retirement, during which he married 
Frances Wray, daughter of Sir Christopher Wray, of Ashby, 
in Lincolnshire, we find him elected, in 1640, member for the 
borough of Kingston-upon-Hull, illustrious predecessor of 
Andrew Marvell in the representation of that place. This step, 
which gave him the opportunity for a prominent use of his em- 
inent abilities, filled the Court, the king, and his father too, 
with alarm, and instant steps were taken " to propitiate the 
possible hostility of the young and resolute statesman." He 
received the honor of knighthood, he was elevated to the office 
of Treasurer of the Navy, with Sir William Russell. Again, 
in the same year, he was elected member for Hull, to serve in 
the Long Parliament; but his own course was clear and un- 
swerving. When the appeal to arms was made by Charles, 
he resigned the patent of office, but was instantly reappointed 
Treasurer of the Navy by the Parliament, and he gave a sin- 
gular instance of his patriotism. The fees of his office were 
great in times of peace, but in times of war they became 
enormous, amounting to ;^3o,ooo per annum. These vast 
emoluments he resigned, only stipulating that a thousand a 
year should be paid to a deputy. Before this he had acquired 
a noi-oriety which many have thought not enviable, as being 
the chief means, the most distinct witness, in proving the in- 
tended treason of Strafford : he discovered in the red velvet 
cabinet those papers, the notes cf a conference, in which Straf- 
ford's counsels had been of such a nature, that Vane could 
only, as a patriot, reveal them to Pym. Pym, upon the oc- 
casion of the great impeachment, revealed them, and Vane 
avowed the authenticity of the revelation. It decided the fate 
of the Earl. It must also have been, if that were wanting, a 
more inevitable step, deciding Vane's political relations. also; 
henceforth he became a star in the Parliamentary firmament, 
and with incessant activity he committed himself to the affairs 
of his country. He soared, indeed, above party strifes, or if 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR HARRY VANE, 189 

he served with a party, it was with that. which we identify with 
the names of Pym and Hampden. For the lower sections of 
political dispute he had no ear, neither had he any ear for any 
of the innumerable frays of opinion in religion, with which, in 
those days, the kingdom rang from end to end. There was no 
hfe for him but in conviction; he ever lived too much aloof 
from those walks in which inferior minds were to be found. 
On his trial he says, referring to the part he took in his mis- 
sion to Edinburgh, where he assisted in framing the Solemn 
League and Covenant with Scotland : 

" Nor will I deny but that, as to the manner of the prose^^u- 
tion of the Covenant to other ends than itself warrants, and 
with a rigid oppressive spirit (to bring all dissenting minds and 
tender consciences under one uniformity of Church discipline 
and government), // was utterly against my judgment. For I 
always esteemed it more agreeable to the Word of God, that 
the ends and work declared in the Covenant should be pro- 
moted in a spirit of love and forbearance to differing judgments, 
and consciences, that thereby we might be approving ourselves 
in doing that to others which we desire they should do to us, 
and so, though on different principles, be found joint and 
faithful advances of the reformation contained in the Covenant, 
both public and personal." 

For a long period Vane wrought with Cromwell in seeking 
to bring the affairs of the Civil Wars to an issue. He and 
Cromwell wrought together the plan of the celebrated Self- 
denying Ordinance, in 1 644-1 645 ; it decided, as our readers 
remember, the campaign ; and, from 1649 to 1653, it has been 
truly said the power and ability of his executive ruled Eng- 
land : he was the director of those great achievements in which 
Blake asserted and maintained the supremacy of England on 
the seas ; his genius devised the means by which the Dutch 
flag, which had waved triumphantly and insolently in defiance, 
suffered signal humiliation. Those were the days, as we have 
seen, when Van Tromp, after having driven Blake into harbor 
with the loss of two sail only, although the Dutch admiral had 
eighty and the English only thirty-seven perfectly equipped 
ships under his command, hoisted a broom at his masthead, 
as if he had swept his antagonist from their own waters. Sir 
Harry Vane presented his estimates and demands for supplies, 
and he procured a resolution that ;,^4o,ooo per month should 
be appropriated to the arsenals and navy-yards ; he prepared 
and brought in a Bill ; he met with singular bravery and sa- 
gacity the great national emergency. Blake was set afloat 



^9o OLIVER CROMWELL, 

•with no less than fourscore ships of war, and Van Tromp was 
in turn, as we know, driven from the EngUsh Channel. 

He also devised a Bill for the reform of English representa- 
tion, in its particulars exceedingly like that known as the Eng- 
lish Reform Bill of our day. A bold and most remarkable 
measure ; for it was the design of this great spirit all along to 
secure for the country constitutional liberty ; its aim was to 
make it impossible for a tyrant like Charles to dominate again 
over English freedom. Was the country prepared for any 
such measure ? Surely the result of a few^ years abundantly 
proved it was not; but noble men and free pure minds are 
wont to estimate the average mind from their own standard 
— it is the error of lofty intelligences in all things. Vane was 
moving ever in the lofty light of the Empyrean. Perhaps he 
knew, theoretically, that the heart is deceitful, and that man 
is fallen ; but he was wont to act as trusting man ; thus he 
gave to the political suffrages of the people immense additions 
by his proposed measure. It was, however, not destined to-^ 
receive the indorsement of legal sanction. It has been usual 
to be very severe on Cromwell ; but no doubt he knew the art 
of governing, and its depths and demands, better than the 
pure and spiritual Vane. It is one point to bid our readers to 
notice how, at this time and in these matters, the brain of 
Cromwell and the hand of Vane worked together. It was 
probably at this period that Milton addressed to Vane his 
well-known sonnet, with the strength of which is combined also 
a fine discrimination of the great statesman's character, and 
those various marks of eminence and goodness which gave to 
him so considerable a claim upon our admiration : 

"Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, 

Than whom abetter senator ne'er held 

The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arras, repelled: 
The fierce Epirot and the Afric bold ; 
Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 

The drift of hollow states hard to be spelled; 

Then to advise how War may, best upheld, 
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 

In all her equipage : besides to know 
Both spiritual power and civil, what each means, 

What severs each, how hast thou learned, which few have done : 

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe ; 
Therefore, on thy firm hands Religion leans 

In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." 

A fine, ethereal, abstract spirit : we see how, when forced 
by immediate and pressing necessity, he was compelled to 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR HAk V VANE. 191 

deal with the difficulties of the hour, such as the raising of 
;^4o,ooo a month to fit out the fleet for Blake to sweep the 
Hollanders from our seas, he came down upon his necessities 
Hke swift lightning, astounding the House by his bold and 
daring methods for raising the money ; and in a similar spirit 
of swift and clear-glancing intelligence, he recast the repre- 
sentation of England. 

We are constrained to think that the moment selected 
for the introduction of this measure was very unpropiticus. 
It led to the final rupture between Vane and Cromwell. Crom- 
well, as we know, dissolved the House, was guilty of that 
great crime, or conquest, which has divided the opinions of 
historians since, which some have called Usurpation, while 
some have called it the illegitimate exercise of power for sav- 
ing and patriotic purposes. It was then those words were 
uttered, " Sir Harry Vane ! Sir Harry Vane ! the Lord de- 
liver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " Cromwell alluded to Vane 
when he said, " One person might have prevented all this, 
but he was a juggler, and had not common honesty : the Lord 
had done with him, however, and chosen honester and 
worthier instruments for carrying on his work." How can we 
ever adequately estimate the misconceptions and the misun- 
derstandings of great, good men ? We believe in Vane, and 
we believe in Cromwell. How can the faiths be reconciled ? 
Only in the remembrance that Vane was eminently and con- 
sistently a Republican ; Cromwell never was. Mr. Forster 
seems ever to forget this in his lives of the statesmen of the 
period. Was it not as possible for Cromwell to be true to 
his conception of Reformation and Government as the Re- 
publicans ? Cromwell never desired the dissolution of the 
ancient monarchy. He would have saved Charles, but that 
the treason and faithlessness of Charles made it impossible ; 
the king was his own destroyer. We know how the nation 
was split into parties. Cromwell desired to restore the nation 
to unity, and he took such a course as best enabled it to rise 
to this restoration. A few days after the so-called usurpation 
found Vane quietly settled in Raby Castle; and, shortly after, 
at Belleau, in Lincolnshire, he prosecuted those studies of 
learning, philosophy, and religion, or, as his biographer says, 
" waited patiently for the first fitting occasion for striking an- 
other stroke for the good old cause." 

He was a restless spirit. He was restless with the restless- 
ness of Baxter, his old foe. We see many points of resem- 
blance between him and Baxter, in his keen metaphysics, his 



19* OLIVER CROMWELL. 

earnest impracticable practicalness, his incessant activity, his 
intense desire to see his own ideas realized, his impatience of 
other men's ideas. We do not charge him with the querulous- 
ness of Baxter. His mind moved in so large and healthful an 
orbit that there was imparted a grand manliness to all his 
designs. His mind and understanding have been likened to 
the laboratory in a vast palace, where all his readings and spec- 
ulations, the results of his experience and learning, were under- 
going analysis, and falling into the proportion of symmetrical 
grandeur. Within that palace, who looks may behold all in 
perfect order, peace, and consistent restfulness. We have said 
the youth who at twenty-three was Governor of Massachusetts, 
had arrived so early at the knowledge of and faith in the 
principles for which he contended throughout his life, and for 
which, in the very prime and fullness of manhood, he died a 
martyr's death. This has not been sufficiently noticed. 
Hence, when from his retirement among the woods and towers 
of Raby he sent out his bold impeachment of Cromwell's Gov- 
ernment, especially that piece called " A Healing Question," 
in which he suggested the idea of a fundamental constitution, 
pleaded for what, no doubt, was regarded, and in fact was, a 
visionary form of organization, anticipating that which Wash- 
ington so many years after gave to America, we are not to see 
a mere restless agitator, but one who, having been second to no 
person in the nation, possessed of the means of princely rest, 
with tastes the highest and most cultivated, was ready to im- 
peril all for his dream. We have said both of the great men 
have our atlecticnate gratitude and admiration. We quite see 
how it was that while Cromwell was, no doubt, startled in 
Whitehall by the apparition of the "Healing Question" from 
Raby, while' the fame, the high services, the eminent rank and 
great genius of the writer might cast a shade over that royal 
face, a sadness over that noble heart, they did not permit him 
to hesitate. His old friend was instantly summoned before the 
Council. He made his appearance directly, and, having been 
briefly questioned concerning his authorship of the " Healing 
Question," and having refused to give a security in a bond of 
;^5ooo to do nothing to the prejudice of the present Govern- 
ment and Commonwealth, he was committed prisoner to Caris- 
brook Castle, the chambers of which had been so recently 
tenanted by the deposed and discrowned king. Why, what else 
could Cromwell do ? That was no moment for playing off 
ethereal, fanciful pictures of phantom republics before the eyes 
of the nation. It may be all very well for Mr. Forster, and 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR HARRY VANE, 193 

writers of that school, to whine and cant about the purity of 
Washington, the tyranny of the Usurper, and such kind of 
stuff. There go two facts to all this. Washington was, no 
doubt, very pure : but he had a whole, united people with 
him. At the worst there were but two parties — those who 
were in secrecy with the English Government ; and the vast 
united mind of the people, one with themselves ! But Eng- 
land was torn into factions innumerable ; this is no moment to 
say how many. Numberless little coteries of hissing snakes 
and slippery eels were wriggling and twisting toward desired 
eminence. As we have said, Cromwell never was a republican • 
— less so now than ever. Shouts of " Usurper ! " " Tyrant ! " 
" Traitor ! " " Deceiver ! " from other factions ; " Detestable 
wretch ! " " Murderer ! " were met by the calm lightning of 
that deep, clear gray eye. " Very likel}^, gentlemen ; just as 
you please, about all such pleasant epithets. Meantime, dis- 
tinctly understand that I am here somehow or other. I have 
some notion that I have been put here by the Eternal God, 
who raiseth up and casteth down. Noble natures, you will 
please to understand that I am ruler here to save you from 
clammy eels or hissing snakes, and you. Messieurs Eels and 
Snakes, put yourselves into the smallest compass, if you please, 
or, by that Eternal God that sent me, so much the worse for 
you ! " The poor, dear Cromwell ! we can quite conceive that 
an infinite grief came over him as he sent his old friend to 
Carisbrooke. Again, we say, what else could he have done t 
Vane would not promise allegiance, and Cromwell would stand 
no nonsense. Noble, royal creatures both ! The world would 
be a poor world without dreamy, visionary Vanes, forecasting 
by their faith and holiness and self-sacrifice the horoscope of 
future ages ; but we stand by Cromwell. There are moments 
in the histories of nations when the resolute hand of a states- 
man, not less strong than wise, not less sagacious than kind, is 
needed to repair the breaches, to strengthen the bulwarks, and 
even the rather to do the work of to-day than that of to-mor- 
row. Still, we are not eulogizing Cromwell now ; but we are 
not disposed to treat this diversity of the two great men as if 
either of them were inconsistent with himself,, 

How long he continued a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle no> 
documents before us very distinctly specify. He certainly 
was there for such a period that he was able to follow the 
course of his meditations through several works, which found, 
their way into print. From thence he published his treatise 
" On the Love of God and Union with God; " and as just 
13 



t94 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

then Harrington published his famous " Oceana," Sir Harry 
wrote his " Needful Corrective ; or, Balance in Popular Gov- 
ernment." The writings of Sir Harry Vane, like many of 
those of his illustrious contemporaries, lie now forgotten and 
unreprinted. That with which his name is especially con- 
nected is " The Retired Man's Meditations." In the intoler- 
ant spirit of the age in which he lived, and in which he had 
so little part, this work was sometimes called " a wicked 
book." " A piece of mystical divinity ; " Cotton Mather, in 
his " Magnalia," expresses himself thus of it, citing the 
opinions of no less a person than Dr. Manton. We must ex- 
press wonder ourselves that it is not better known ; but it 
belongs to an order of books of that period very little studied. 
How many of our readers are acquainted with the v/ritings of 
Peter Sterry, Cromwell's chaplain ? His " Rise, Race, and 
Royalty of the Children of God," or his " Freedom of the 
Will " ? How many are acquainted with Everard's " Gospel 
Treasury," or with the " Evangelical Essays " of George Sykes, 
Vane's close and intimate friend and biographer .'' It is to 
this order of books we must assign " The Retired Man's 
Meditations." It seems, although its preface is dated from 
Belleau, to have been written at Raby, where he spent the 
first and most peaceful portion of his time after Cromwell's 
assumption of power ; it was probably, what its title purports, 
a retired mmi's meditatio7is. We purpose in some few words 
to vindicate the book from Hume's sneer of being " abso- 
lutely unintelligible, without any trace of eloquence or com- 
mon sense." We do not believe Hume ever attempted to 
read the book. Hume's method of writing his history and 
arriving at his conclusions is now very well known. Lord 
Clarendon, more bitter in his hatred of Vane, as is most 
natural, than Hume, after all his depreciating malignity, ex- 
pressed the ground of the truth when he said, " The subject- 
matter of Vane's writing is of so delicate a nature that it 
requires another kind of preparation of mind, and, it may be, 
another kind of diet, than men are ordinarily supplied with," 
No doubt the book is mystical ; few of the writers we prize of 
that period were not mystical. 'Whatmore mystical than the 
" Pilgrim's Progress " ? We do not find the " Retired Man's 
Meditations " more mystical than " The Saints, Everlasting 
Rest." Some years since, a very able and interesting paper 
appeared in the Westminster Review^ suggesting some points 
of analogy between Vane and Bi.'.vran. The testimony from 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR HARRY VANE, 195 

such a quarter is most remarkable, and as just as it is re- 
markable. 

Cromwell died, as we know, on the anniversary day of his 
great battles of Worcester and Dunbar, September 3d, 1658. 
Richard Cromwell, as we also know, attempted that which, 
whatever might have been his personal excellence, was ut- 
terly impossible to his placid and unstatesmanlike genius — 
the government of the country in the hour when every breaker 
and billow of the political ocean was beating upon its shores. 
Of course we are not in this place prepared to discuss at any 
length the causes of his memorable failure, only so far as the 
circumstances are related to our subject. Vane, naturally, 
emerged instantly from his retirement, and became an object 
of terror, certainly of alarm, to the new Protector ; for Vane 
carried with him an amazing popularity and consideration 
with many great parties of the nation, especially of that strong 
but humble republican party, the members of which, now that 
the strong warrior-prince was dead, were mustering together 
from their country-seats and places of exile. Vane offered 
himself as a candidate for his old borough of Kingston-upon- 
Hull — for which place he, indeed, claimed to be considered as 
the lawful representative, as neither he nor his party acknowl- 
edged the dissolution of the Long Parliament, although compel- 
led to submit to it — and he was returned by a majority of votes, 
but the Cromwell party gave the certificate of his election to an- 
other. He then proceeded to Bristol, with exactly the same re- 
sults. He then stood for Whitechurch, in Hampshire, and by his 
return for this really inconsiderable borough he was now able 
to occupy the place which the Cromwell party had so much 
dreaded in the House of Commons. This is the circumstance 
to which Baxter so ungenerously alludes when he speaks of him 
as " the rejected of three boroughs," which, however, was not 
the case. As we read the story of that brief and mournful 
struggle, whatever admiration we may give to the magnanimity 
of Vane and his coadjutors, we are unable to spare much sym- 
pathy. We become impatient and exasperated while we 
behold these heroic and splendid struggles, men of large 
capacity, of immense faith in "their principles, pouring about 
their oratory, declamation, and invective ; spinning their clever 
tactics for displacing Richard Cromwell, and rearing their 
phantom republics, while the subtle Monk was hatching his 
schemes, and the dastardly Charles Stuart cracking his jokes 
over his intended feats of murder and treason. And for these 
brave spirits the wood was being prepared for the scaffold, and 



196 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

the headsmen sharpening their axes and preparing their ropes ! 
Oh, it is a mournful business — strange ! How different is the 
aspect of affairs to posterity than to the living actors in a great 
drama ! With Vane as their chief, wrought Algernon Sidney, 
and other such masculine and majestic men. If ever there 
existed men who seem to our minds to realize the colossal t}'pe 
of Roman, Coriolanus-like greatness, these were the men. 
They thought they were acting to prevent the vile Stuarts' 
return ; we suppose of any party there now scarcely lives one 
who does not see that they took exactly the course to hasten it. 
The clear, ringing eloquence, especially of Sir Harry Vane, 
sounds like the mournful toll of English freedom ; high, great 
sentiments heave out in that instantaneous attack he organized 
upon the Government, and the right of Richard Cromwell, im- 
mediately on taking his seat in the House. He resisted the 
Government, especially from the fear that it would, by its 
weakness, accelerate the return of the king. Again and again 
he exclaims, " Shall we be underbuilders to supreme Stuart ? 
Shall we lay the foundation of a system that must bring a 
Charles the Second back to us, sooner or later ? " Much of his 
language has a scorn, a personal invective, of so bitter a kind, 
that we grieve to hear it from the lips of Vane. Here is a 
passage : 

" Mr. Speaker : Among all the people of the universe, I 
know none v/ho have shown so much zeal for the liberty for 
their country as the English at this time have done ; 
they have, by the help of Divine Providence, overcome all 
obstacles, and have made themselves free. We have driven 
away the hereditary tyranny of the House of Stuart, at the 
expense of much blood and treasure, in hopes of enjoying 
hereditary liberty, after shaking off the yoke of kingship ; and 
there is not a man among us who could have imagined that 
any person would be so bold as to attempt the ravishing from 
us that freedom, which cost us so much blood and so much 
labor. But so it happens, I know not by what misfortune, we 
are fallen into the error of those who poisoned the Emperor 
Titus to make room for Domitian, who made away with 
Augustus that they might have Tiberius, and changed Clau- 
■dius for Nero. I am sensible these examples are foreign from 
■my subject, since the Romans in those days were buried in 
lewdness and luxury ; whereas the people of England are re- 
nowned, all over the world, for their great virtue and discipline, 
and yet suffer an idiot without courage, without sense, nay, 
without ambition, to have dominion in a country of liberty ! 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR HARRY VANE. 197 

One could bear a little with Oliver Cromwell, though, con- 
trary to his oath of fidelity to the Parliament, contrary to his 
duty to the public, contrary to the respect he owed that ven- 
erable body from whom he received his authority, he usurped 
the Government. His merit was so extraordinary that our 
judgments, our passions, might be blinded by it. He made 
his way to empire by the most illustrious actions ; he had 
under his command an army that had made him a conqueror, 
and a people that had made him their general. But as for 
Richard Cromwell, his son, who is he ? — what are his titles ? 
We have seen that he had a sword by his side ; but did he 
ever draw it ? And what is of more importance in this case, 
is he fit to get- obedience from a mighty nation, who could 
never m.ake a footman obey him ? Yet we must recognize 
this man as our king, under the style of Protector ! — a man 
without birth, without courage, without conduct. For my 
part, I declare, sir, it shall never be said that I made that man 
my m.aster." 

Well, words like these drove the naturally quiet fnan to his 
obscurity at Cheshunt. He abdicated, and never appeared in 
public again. And now rapidly hastened the movement of 
Monk, for in the brief period which remained in the inextrica- 
ble coil of affairs. Vane became President of the Council of 
the nation ; but Monk held the army, and the glorious mo- 
ments of English freedom and justice were drawing to a close. 
Charles returned ; an immense and most gracious indemnity 
was procured to all. Vane had taken no part in the trial and 
execution of Charles I., and when the king returned, he con- 
tinued in his house at Hampstead : but he was one of the very 
first made to translate the king's sense of his promised Act of 
Indemnity; he was arrested in July, 1660, and flung into the 
Tower. There can be no doubt that Clarendon and Charles 
had determined on his murder from the very first. From many 
considerations he was, probably, the strongest man in Eng- 
land ; it was a very difiicult thing to find grounds for an indict- 
ment, and for two years he continued in prison. He was 
removed from the Tower to a lonely castle in one of the Scilly 
Isles. There, utterly severed from all communication with 
his family, or anv of his great comrades, he was consigned, 
only to hear the winds raving round the turrets of his prison, 
or the moaning sea dashing at its base. In such states this 
great man seems to shine out with more dignity and beauty. 
What were his thoughts there, what his consolations or occu- 
pations, we have no means of very well knowing, excepting 



198 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

by the result, when those great traitors to English freedom, 
having procured a more supple Parliament, and having man- 
ipulated and maneuvered, with ingenious dexterity, their de- 
termination upon his life, recalled him to London. Meantime, 
his friends were in the grave or in exile ; their bodies, like his, 
were immured in dungeons, or the scaffold had drunk their 
blood. A letter to his wife, too long to quote, furnishes proof 
of the fine texture of his character, reveals his own resolution, 
and in subtle and concealed hints, his assurance that he would 
soon be called to die. Some of his purest thoughts also occur 
in his paper, entitled " Meditations on Death." He was nerv- 
ing himself for the hievitable end. Such passages as the fol- 
lowing show this : 

His Meditation in Prison on Death. 

" Death is the inevitable law God and nature have put upon 
us. Things certain should not be feared. Death, instead of 
taking away anything from us, gives us all, even the perfec- 
tion of .our natures ; sets us at liberty both from our own 
bodily desires and others' domination ; makes the servant 
free from his master. It doth not bring us into darkness, 
but takes darkness out of us, us out of darkness, and puts us 
into marvelous light. Nothing perishes or is dissolved b)' 
death but the veil and covering which is wont to be done 
away from all ripe fruit. It brings us out of a dark dungeon, 
through the crannies * whereof our sight of light is but weak 
and small, and brings us into an open liberty, and estate of 
light and life, unveiled and perpetual. It takes us out of 
that mortality which began in the womb of our mother, and 
now ends to bring us into that life which shall never end. 
This day, which thou fearest as thy last, is thy birthday into 
eternity. 

" Death holds a high place in the policy and great common- 
wealth of the world. It is very profitable for the succession 
and continuance of the works of nature." 

Again : 

" It is most just, reasonable, and desirable, to arrive at that 
place toward which we are always walking. Why fearest thou 
to go whither all the world goes ? It is the part of a valiant 

* It is impossible not to remember Waller's most charming lines, whichseem an 
almost literal translation into verse of these words and sentiments of Vane : 
" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed. 

Lets in new light through chinks which time has made ; 
Stronger by wea'icness, wiser we become, 
As we draw near to our eternal home." 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR HARRY VANE. 199 

and generous mind, to prefer some things before life, as things 
for which a man should not doubt or fear to die. In such a 
case, however matters go, a man must more account thereof 
than of his life. He must run his race with resolution, that 
he may perform things flTofitable and exemplary." 

Thus the nobler English Seneca consoled and strengthened 
himself : 

*' There is a time to live and a time to die. A good death 
is far better and more eligible than an ill life. A wise man 
lives but so long as his life is more worth than his death. The 
longer life is not always the better. To what end serves a 
long life ? Simply to live, breathe, eat, drink, and see this 
world. What needs so long a time for all this ? Methinks 
we should soon be tired with the daily repetition of these and 
the like vanities. Would v/e live long to gain knowledge, 
experience, and virtue ? This seems an honest design, but 
is better to be had other ways by good men, when their 
bodies are in the grave." 

Again : 

" It is a great point of wisdom to know the right hour and 
fit season to die. . Many men have survived their own glory. 
That is the best death which is well recollected in itself, quiet, 
solitary, and attendeth wholly to what at that time is fittest. 

" They that live by faith die daily. The life which faith 
teaches works death. It leads up the mind to things not 
seen, which are eternal, and takes it off, with its affections 
and desires, from things seen, which are temporary." 

We pass over his pathetic, high-toned, and beautiful letter 
to his wife. We notice, however, such passages as the fol- 
lowing : 

" Have faith and hope, my dearest. God's arm is not 
shortened ; doubtless great and precious promises are yet in 
store to be accomplished in and upon believers here on earth, 
to the making of Christ admired in them. And if we can not 
live in the power and actual possession of them, yet if we die 
in the foresight and embracing of them by faith, it will be our 
great blessing. This dark night and black shade which God 
hath drawn over His work in the midst of us, may be, for 
aught we know^, the ground-color to some beautiful piece that 
He is now exposing to the light. 

* * * * * * 

" And why should such a taking up sanctuary in God, and 
desiring to continue a pilgrim and solitary in this world, while 
I am in it, afford still matter of jealousy, distrust, and rage, 



300 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

as I see it doth to those who are unwilUng that I should be 
buried and He quiet in my grave where I now am. They 
that press so earnestly to carry on my trial do little know 
what presence of God may be afforded me in, and issue out 
of it, to the magnifying of Christ in my body, by life or by 
death. Nor can they, I am sure, imagine how much I desire 
to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which of all things that 
can befall me I account best of all. And till then, I desire 
to be made faithful in my place and station, to make confession 
of Him before men, and not deny His name, if called forth 
to give a public testimony and witness concerning Him, and 
to be herein nothing terrified." 

He was removed from Scilly to the Tower of London, 
about March, 1662, and he was brought before the Court of 
King's Bench on the 2d of June, 1662. The indictment, 
which he was not permitted to see before it was read, nor 
permitted to have a copy of afterward, charged him with 
compassing and imagining the death of Charles H., and 
conspiring to subvert the ancient frame of the king by govern- 
ment of the realm. Even for that heinous year, when law 
was a mockery, the grounds of the indictment of Sir Harry 
Vane are marvelous in their wickedness. Will it be believed 
now, by ordinar)^ readers, that one of the first items of the im- 
peachment was that which we have designated as his illustrious 
defense of the English seas ; sweeping the waves of our narrow 
Channel free of Van Tromp, with his broom at the masthead. 
This report of " an estimate of the number of ships for the sum- 
mer guard of the narrow seas ; " a " lev}^ of ;^2 0,000 on South 
Wales for the fitting out this fleet,'' which was " to be paid to 
Sir Harry Vane, as Treasurer of the Navy; " warrants for the 
production of firelocks and drums ; warrants for the commission 
of officers of the army, bearing his authority ; warrants for 
delivering arms and barrels of powder to regiments. Such 
were the items of this memorable indictment. Perhaps the 
more serious, although hypothetical, was the following : 

** Then one Marsh was produced a witness, who proves that 
Sir Henry Vane proposed the new model of Government, 
Whitlock being in the chair, in these particulars : 

" I. That the supreme power, delegated by the people to 
their trustees, ought to be in some fundamentals not dispensed 
with. 

" 2. That it is destruction to the people's liberties (to 
which by God's blessing they are restored) to admit any earthly 



CONTEMPORARIES: SIR HARRY VANE. 201 

king or single person to the legislative or executive power over 
the nation. 

"3. That the supreme power delegated is not entrusted to 
the people's trustees, to erect matters of Faith or Worship, so 
as to exercise compulsion therein." 

"Thomas Pury proves that he was at the debating of the 
two last of these propositions, and believes they were proposed 
to the chairman Whitlock by Sir Henry Vane ; but affirms 
confidently that Sir Henry Vane gave reasons to maintain 
them." 

Of course, the argument with reference to the navy pro- 
ceeded upon the principle that to sustain the army and navy 
was to keep the king out of his possession. The trial was a 
nefarious business. Ludlow somewhere remarks in his inter- 
esting life, that upon his trial, Sir Harry Vane pleaded rather 
for the life and liberties of his country than for his own ; he 
addressed himself to his task in a spirit of royal cheerfulness, 
and with overwhelming tact and eloquence set aside the validity 
of the charges. His convincing charges took from his prose- 
cutors the power of reply, and the Chief Justice, Forster, was 
heard to say : " Though we know not what to say to him, we 
know what to do to him." After Vane's closing defense, the 
Solicitor-General, in a speech of singular execrable brutality, 
declared to the jury, that " the prisoner must be made a public 
sacrifice," and in reply to Vane's protest that he had not been 
permitted to have the benefit of counsel, the same worthy 
asked, " What counsel did the prisoner think would, or durst 
speak for him, in such a manifest case of treason, unless he 
could call down the heads of his fellow-traitors from Westmin- 
ster Hall." The Solicitor-General was even permitted to 
whisper to all the members of the jury as they left the box. 
They deliberated half an hour, and returned a verdict of 
" Guilty." There had been some fooHsh expectation that, 
even then, his life might be saved; but Charles and Clarendon 
were even nervously anxious for his murder. Mr. Forster pro- 
duces the following letter from Charles to Clarendon, the day 
after his trial, and before his sentence : 

" The relation that has been made to me of Sir Henry 
Vane's carriage yesterday in the hall, is the occasion of this 
letter, which, if I am rightly informed, was so insolent as to 
justify all he had done, acknowledging no supreme power in 
England but a Parliament, and many things to that purpose. 
You have had a true account of all ; and if he has given new 
occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous a man to 



202 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Think of 
this, and give me some account of it to-morrow, till then I 
have no more to say to you. — C. R." 

Called up for his sentence, there were circumstances of con- 
siderable excitement in the court. He submitted, for instance 
first, " Whether Parliament were accountable to any inferior 
Court." Second, "Whether the king, being out of posses- 
sion — " here the Court broke in upon him with great vehe- 
mence, declaring, "the king never was out of possession," 
With exceeding coolness he replied, that " the indictment 
against him, then, must inevitably fall to the ground, for the 
one charge alleged against him was that he endeavored to 
keep out His Majesty." It was unanswerable. The excite- 
ment became intense ; in the midst of it he desisted from all 
further attempts, folded up his jDapers, solemnly appealed 
from the tribunal to the judgment of God, reminding the 
judges that before that judgment they would all at last be 
brought, and expressed his willingness to die for his testimony. 
Abusive Sergeant Keeling broke in here, " So you may, sir, in 
good time, by the grace of God." This was he who, in a pre- 
vious hour of the trial, when Vane was reading a passage 
from a volume of the Statutes, desiring to look at it, attempted 
to snatch it rudely from his hands. Vane withheld and closed 
the volume, exclaiming, " When I employ you as my counsel, 
sir, I will find you books." He was sentenced to execution 
on Tower Hill. English lawyers have since then pronounced 
the sentence " infamous." Even Justice Forster, who tried him, 
is quoted by Mr. Forster as, by implication, in his apology 
condemning the verdict. The case only stands on record as 
a selection of the most marked and conspicuous man in the 
nation as the subject of royal revenge. He was condemned 
on Wednesday ; he was to die on Saturday. 

A little volume before us, from which we have already 
quoted, contains many of his occasional speeches ; they ought 
to be better known. Sometimes, in his speeches in the House 
of Commons, we have thought we detected the marks of irrita- 
tion and petulance. But there are no such indications in 
these words ; a calm, seraphic glow pervades them all, a full 
assurance of faith, a hope of glory. He does not condescend - 
to indulge in any remarks, even upon either his adversaries or 
his unpropitious trial ; there seems only, if that may be said, 
too great a desire to depart and to have done with it all. The 
prayer with his wife and children and some of his friends the 
night before his execution, which "his friend Sykes has pre- 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR HARRY VANE, 203 

served, is a wonderful rapture of elevated and sustained and 
earnest devotion. It is full of pithy pieces ; especially he 
prays, " Let thy servant see death shrink under him ; what a 
glorious sight will this be, in the presence of many witnesses, 
to have death shrink under him, which he acknowledged to be 
only by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, whom 
the bands of death could not hold down ; let that spirit enter 
into us that will set us again upon our feet." He adores God 
the father because, " Thou art rending this veil and bringing 
us to a mountain that abides firm." He prayed for his fam- 

" Prosper and relieve that poor handful that are in prisons 
and bonds, that they may be raised up and trample death under 
foot. Let my poor family that is left desolate, let my dear 
wife and children be taken into Thy care, be Thou a husband, 
father, and master to them. Let the spirits of those that love 
me be drawn out toward them. Let a blessing be upon 
these friends that are here at this time, strengthen them, let 
them find love and grace in thine eyes, and be increased with 
the increasings of God. Show Thyself a loving Father to us 
all, and do for us abundantly, above and beyond all we can 
ask or think, for Jesus Christ's sake." Amen. 

After this, at about midnight, came the warrant for his exe- 
cution the following day ; the next morning he said there was 
" no dismalness in it after the receipt of the warrant ; I slept 
four hours so soundly, that the Lord hath made it sufficient 
for me, and now I am going to sleep my last, after which I 
shall need to sleep no more." He seems to have met his wife 
and children again that day early in the forenoon, and part- 
ing with them, said, " There is some flesh remaining yet, but 
I must cast it behind me, and press forward to my father." 
The sheriff came to him and said he could not be ready for 
half an hour yet. "Then, sir," said Sir Harry, " it rests with 
you, for I have been ready this half-hour." It was thought 
at first that he would have to walk to execution ; the sledge 
had not arrived ; at length it came, and he said, " Any way, 
how they please ; I long to be at home, to be dissolved, and 
to be with Christ, Avhich is best of all." He went downstairs 
from his chamber and seated himself in the sledge, his friends 
and servants standing by him, and Sykes accompanying him 
to the close. As they passed along, it was like a royal pro- 
cession ; shouts and gestures were made to him ; the tops of 
the houses were crowded, and all the windows thronged ; 
even the prisoners of the Tower, as he passed along, and the 



204 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

thronging multitudes by his side, and the people looking down 
on the procession, exclaimed, " The Lord go with you ; the 
great God of heaven and earth appear in you. and for you." 
As he came within the rails of the scaffold, the pathetic voices 
of the people greeted him with like acclamations, crying out, 
" The Lord Jesus be with thy dear soul ! " One voice shouted 
to him, " That is the most glorious seat you ever sat on ! " 
•' It is so, indeed," he replied in a cheerful voice. When he 
appeared in front of the scaffold, in his black suit and cloak, 
with scarlet silk waistcoat, the victorious color, many supposed 
he was some person connected officially with the execution, or 
some looker on. They were amazed to find in that great and 
noble presence the prisoner who was to die. '' How cheerful 
he is ! " said some ; " He does not look like a dying man ! ' 
said others ; with other such astonishing speeches. The scene 
at his execution was, on the part of the Government, disgrace- 
ful. Vane was calm enough to attempt to address the multi- 
tude coherently ; he had promised to say nothing reflecting 
on the king or Government, nor does it seem that he attempt- 
ed to do so. He was hustled, his papers snatched from his 
hands, taken from his pocket ; even then, in the midst of all, 
he preserved a serene and comijosed demeanor. When he 
attempted to speak, the trumpets sounded to drown his voice. 
Enthusiasm wept for him, while it admired him ! At last he 
turned aside, exclaiming, " It is a bad cause which can not 
hear the words of a d34ng man." He seems to have been 
permitted to pray a little in peace ; such sentences as the 
following fell from him, recorded by Sykes : " Bring us, O 
Lord, into the true mystical Sabbath, that we may cease from 
our works, rest from our labors, and become a meet habitation 
for thy spirit," etc., etc. His last words were, " Father, glo- 
rify Thy servant in the sight of men, that he may glorify Thee 
in the discharge of his duty to Thee and to his country." 
Thereupon he stretched out his arms ; in an instant, swift 
fell the stroke, and the head of one of the greatest and purest 
beings that ever adorned our world, rolled on the scaffold ! 
Old Pepys was there, and in his book he tells us how he had 
a room on Tower Hill, that he might see the whole affair. He 
testifies — and he was in a Government office at the time, as 
we know — that " Vane changed not his color nor his spirit to 
the last ; spoke very confidently of his being presently at the 
right hand of Christ, and in all things appeared the most 
resolved man that ever died in that manner ; and showed 
more of heat than cowardice, but yet, withal, humility and 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR Hakky VANE, 205 

gravity." And the testimony from an imbecile time-server, 
like Pepys, has a little measure of historic worth in it. 

So Sir Harry went away in his chariot to heaven, and 
Pepys tells us how he " went away to dinner " ! A day or 
two after, he tells how " the talk was that Sir Harry Vane 
must be gone to heaven, and that the king had lost more by 
that man's death than he will gain again in a good Vv'hile." 
Sykes beautifully and pathetically says, " Cromwell's vic- 
tories are swallowed up of death ; Vane has swallowed up 
death itself in victory. He let fall his mantle, left his body 
behind him, that he had worn for nine-and-forty years, and 
has gone to keep his everlasting jubilee in God's everlasting 
rest. It is all day with him now, no night nor sorrow more, 
no prison, nor death ! " Burnet testifies, and Pepys also 
implies it, that his death made the foundations of the throne 
thrill, and almost shook it from its steadfastness. 

The pubUshing of the little pamphlet of his trial, which- 
was extensively circulated, and his most remarkable biog- 
raphy by Sykes, set him a talking, in a wonderful manner, 
in men's consciences, after his death. February nth, 1663, 
Pepys testifies : " At night my wife read Sir H. Vane's trial 
to me, and I find it a very excellent thing, worth reading, 
and him to have been a very wise man." Also Vane's pam- 
phlets, his " Healing Question," his " Balance of Govern- 
ment," and the others, were being read in private meetings ; 
and his spirit was at work, although his body was in the 
tomb. He was beheaded, but we may believe that the 
memory of his execution, joined to the recollection of his 
singularly noble and pure career, did something, toward, 
sweeping finally, and forever, the execrable, execrated, and 
detested Stuarts from the throne. Clarendon makes it an. 
article against Vane, that he was " a man independent of all 
parties;" and it is for this reason, since his death Vane 
has received far less justice, both at the hands of his con- 
temporaries and posterity, than most of the great characters 
of that illustrious period of our history. Although he was of 
the Nonconformists, he was too broad and too high in his views 
to give them much satisfaction. If he opposed the bishops 
and forfeited their favor, he would not persecute Mrs. Anne 
Hutchinson, and he sacrificed the favor of the sectaries ; 
religiously, v»'hile we have indicated the frequent mysticism 
of his views, he was immeasurably in advance of his age. 
We love Richard Baxter, but his account of Vane is cingu- 
larly characteristic of tiie frequent narrowness, and half 



2o6 OLIVER CROMtVMLL. 

malignant querulousness of the dear old father. As Vane 
was before his age in religion — a matter very greatly to 
himself — so also he was before his age in politics. We. ad- 
mire and reverence him, but for the interests of peace and 
for the well-ordering of the State we are compelled to side 
with Cromwell. But Vane's life is, altogether, one that does 
one good to read or to compile. There was. not a shred nor 
thread of littleness in any part of his character ; its only 
fault is its lofty ideality. Not one of his numerous assailants 
or adversaries has ever been able, by a breath, to touch or 
tarnish the pure mirror of that excellence. The* only possi- 
ble, doubtful circumstance, is the possession of that paper 
from the velvet case, v/hich became evidence leading to the 
death of Strafford. We think it can not be doubtful what 
any of our readers, in such a case, would have done ; a 
movement of Providence seemed to guide his hands to that 
fatal case, and once possessed of its information, how could 
he do otherwise than reveal it to his countr}^ ? Altogether, 
the whole character of Sir Harry Vane stands in its lucid 
and transparent satisfactoriness by the side of the few most 
really elevated men of the time. He represents, in full-orbed 
completeness, those principles in living embodiment which 
adorns the political pages of Milton, which shine also in the 
career of Marvell. He had the political righteousness 
which makes Pym and Hampden so venerable ; while he 
seems to have combined, in a rare manner, that patient 
Biblical research, that life of devout thought and inquisition, 
which flames over the pages of Howe ; the rarity of his 
character being, that beyond almost any other mighty politi- 
cian to whom we can refer, he united the attributes of action, 
which made him powerful in Whitehall, with the attributes 
of contemplation, which, as they solaced his own spirit 
among the woods of Raby, the retirement of Belleau, or the 
dungeons of Scilly, prove even now attractive to those who 
begin to peruse his little known but animating pages.* 

As, in the earlier pages of the .present volume, the writer 
placed among the contemporaries of Cromwell the great Her- 
ald of the Revolution, Sir John Eliot, as illustrating the work 
which had to be done, and which needed Cromwell as the 

* The bones of Vane seem to have been stirring lately in resurrection ; two or 
three papers, in addition to the brief memoir by John Forster, have [.appeared 
within the last three or four years. It is necessary, therefore, that the present 
writer should say that the paper upon Vane which closes this volume was substan- 
tially published by him about ten years since in the English Eclectic Review^ of 
which he was then editor. But the memory of this great man still waits for an 
adequate biography, and the gathering up and reprinting t)f his various pieces. 



CONTEMPORARIES : SIR HARRY VANE. 207 

Strong Knight-Commander and General in the conflict and on 
the field, so he closes the volume with this account of Crom- 
well's greatest contemporary, in whose death we behold the 
departure of the great prophet of the time. We have seen 
that the fine, pure, mystical, and abstract spirit of Vane quite 
vindicates and authenticates Cromwell's impatient ejaculation. 
The country eminently needed a strong, martial hand ; and 
to what the policy of Vane would have conducted we see in 
what it came to at last. It built his own scaffold as well as 
the scaffold of all the great leaders of the party ; and that 
Long Parliament, which in its earliest days presents us with 
one of the grandest chapters of parliamentary glory, in its 
latest days only compels us to a feeling of execration for what 
it effected in bringing back the detested Stuart. And this, 
but for Cromwell, Vane and the party with whom he worked 
would have effected earlier ; and Cromwell — if it be possible 
to think that such a restoration could have taken effect while 
he lived — would have lost his head, as well as Vane. As 
Cromwell's career shows us distinctly what the great Pro- 
tector did, so do the closing years of Vane's life show what 
that great Protector averted. 



APPENDIX. 



[The following Ballads »re selected from " Lays and Legends 6v 
Puritan Heroes," by the author of the present biography, privately 
printed but not published some years since ; their insertion in this place 
may not seem inappropriate.] 

THE FARMER OF ST. IVES. 

SUGGESTED BY THE PROPOSAL TO ERECT A MONUMENT TO THE 
farmer's MEMORY. 

" In the care of the St. Ives Farm he now not onh- sought emplovment for 
some portion of the ill-subdued energy which r.lways craved in him for 
action, but also put to the proof the value of t^.ose thoughts we have at- 
tributed to him after the disastrous Dissolution of 1628. In the tenants 
that rented from him, in the laborer that took ::crvice unde/ hio, he 
sought to sow the seeds of his after-troop of Ironsides. He achieved an 
influence through the neighborhood all round him, unequale^ for piety 
and self-denying virtue. The greater part cf his time, even upon !iu 
farm, was passed in devotional exercises, expositions, and prayer. Who 
prays best will work best ; who preaches '^ect will fighl, .^est. All the fa- 
mous doctrines of his later and -lore celebrated yoars \\^V2 tried and 
tested on the little Farm of St. Ive^." — Forster's -'Avcs of the Statesmen oj 
the Commo7twealtk, The shadow of Cromwell's name overawed the most 
confident and haughty. He intimidated HollaiT^l, he humiliated Spain, 
and he twisted the supple Mazarin, the ruler of France, about his finger. 
No agent of equal potency and equal moderation had appeared upon 
earth before. He walked into a den o£ lions, and scourged them, growl- 
ing, out ; Bonaparte was pushed in a menagerie of monkeys, and fainted sit 
their grimaces." — Walter Savage Landor. 

Raise up, raise up, the pillar ! some grand old granite stone, 
To the king without a scepter, to the prince without a throne I 
To the brave old English hero who broke our feudal gyves, 
To the leader of the " good old cause," the Farmer of St. Ives. 

The old Plantagenets brought us chains ; the Tudors frowns and scars ; 
The Stuarts brought us lives of shame ; the Hanoverian wars ; 
But this brave man, with his strong arm, brought freedom to our lives — 
The best of Princes England had was the Farmer of St. Ives. 

Oh, holy, happy homestead, there where the Farmer dwelt I 
Around his hearth, around his board, the wearied laborers knelt; 
Not there the jest, the curse, the song, — in prayer each spirit bides, 
Till forth they came, a glorious throng, the brave old Ironsides. 
14 



210 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

Walk proudly past these hedges, for this is holy ground; 
Amid these lowly villages were England's bravest found; 
With praying hearts and truthful, they left their homes and wives, 
And ranged, for freedom's cause, around the Farmer of St. Ives. 

Hark ! England feels his tramping, our own Achilles comes ; 

His Watchword, " God is with us ! " it thunders through our homes. 

High o'er the raging tumult, hark I 'tis the Farmer's cry, — 

'* Fear not, but put your trust in God, and keep your Powder 

DRY." 

Ho ! Marston, 'neath the moonlight, thy thousands owned his power. 
Ho ! Naseby ! there the scepter fell from out the monarch's power. 
Ho ! Preston ! Dunbar ! Worcester ! Lo, there his spirit strives, — 
Hurrah I the tyrants fly before the Farmer of St. Ives. 

On many a Norman turret stern blows the hero dealt, 

And many an old Cathedral nave his echoing footsteps felt : 

In many a lonely mansion the legend still survives, 

How prayers and blows /^// mell came down from the Farmer of St. Ives, 

He wrapped the purple round him, he sat in chair of state. 

And think ye was not this man King? The whole world name him 

Great ! 
The wary fox of Italy, and Bourbon's sensual slave, ■ [brave. 

And the old bluff Dutchman, owned the power of England's bold and 

He was the true defender of Freedom and of Faith ; 
When through the Vaudois valleys brave martyrs died the death ; 
He threw his banner o'er their homes and wrapt in it their lives ; 
And the Alpine summits sung the praise of .the Farmer of St. Ives. 

His was the wizard power ; he held it not in vain ; 
He broke the tyrant's iron rule and lashed them with their chain. 
Oh I the shade of earth's great heroes, in all their pomp look dim, 
When rose in Whitehall's Palaces our great Protector's hymn. 

He died ! the good old monarch died 1 Then to the land returned 
The cruel, crowned, reptile thing, that men and angels spurned , 
He seized the bones as reptiles seize upon the buried dead, 
And a fiend's malice wrecked upon that venerable head.* 

And England, while from age to age fresh freedom she achieved. 
Forgot the hand that wrote the page in which her heart believed ; 
From age to age earth held his dust, a life like other lives, 
Lo, you ! at length he breathes again, this Farmer of St. Ives. 

* This act has been well described as one of barbarous malignity ; and it is well 
known to have originated with the restored Monarch. It may be interesting to read 
the following from the Gesta Briitanortcm^ at the end of " Wharton's Almanac " 
for i66» : " January 30, O.S. The odious carcasses of O. Cromwell, H. Ireton, and 
J. Bradshaw, were drawn upon sledges to Tyburn, and being pulled out of their 
coffins, then hanged at the several angles of that triple tree until sunset ; then taken 
down, and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gallows. The 
heads were afterward set upon poles on the top of Westminster Hall." The fol- 
lowing is the mason's leceipt for taking up the bodies, as copied from the original 
by Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary of the Royal Society : '' May the ijth day, 
1661. Reed, then in full, of the Worshipful Sergeant Norfolk, fiveteen shillings for 
taking up the corpses of Cromwell, and Ireton, and Bradshaw. Reed, by mce, 
John Lewis." 



4PP£NDIX. ill 

His name shall burn — no meteor, no comet hurrying by- 
It shall return to light our world to future liberty. 
Let tyrants dare to trample hearts and liberties and lives ; 
One name shall bid them tremble yet — The Farmer of St. Ivci. 

Unfurl that drooping banner I So ! let it float again ; 
Ye winds receive it in your clasp ! waft it, thou surging main I 
His watchword, " God is with us ! " see ye it still survives; 
The pulse of England beats like his — The Farmer of St. Ives. 

Raise up, raise up the pillar ! some grand old granite stone, 
To the prince without a scepter, to the king without a throne 1 
To the brave old English hero who broke our feudal gyves, 
To the leader of the " good old cause," the Farmer of St. Ive*. 
Written in Ramsey Churchyard, 
Huntingdonshire, 1848. 



THE BATTLE OF DUNBAR. 

(AS RECITED BY ONE OF THE PURITAN ARMY, 1686.) 

Come, gather round this winter hearth, and I will tell a tale 
Shall make the coldest heart beat high, and blanch the tyrant palej 
Shall bid all true hearts to be strong, since truth can never fail. 
And warn the oppressor that his hour comes floating on the gale. 
I'll tell you how, at freedom's call, arose the blast of war, — 
I'll tell you how our Cromwell fought and conquered at Dunbar. 

The Scots they sought to conquer us, tho' we had lent them aid 
To rend the hated cassock off from their own mountain plaid': 
They sought to gird our land within the Presbytery's shade, 
And so, to crown Charles Stuart King, they led their highland raid — 
To crush our faith the Highland clans came flocking near and far, 
And we were there to conquer them, or perish, at Dunbar. 

Each English heart that day beat high, with hope and courage rare- 
Such hope may England ever have, to make her foes despair. 
Yet heavy was the cannon's roll and stern the trumpet's blare ; 
It was not fear, but faith to death — I know, for / was there. 
This arm on many a foeman laid the bloody brand of war. 
When our Protector, Cromwell, fought and conquered at Dunbar. 

Like sheep for slaughter there we lay ; alas ! what power had we } 
Behind us stretched, all drear and grim, the dread and awful sea; 
And there the hosts of Leslie lay, — we could not fight nor flee; 
We only knew the Lord of Hosts would our deliverer be. 
We held His promise to our hearts, like good news from afar, 
He saved on Marston's bloody field, and why not at Dunbar ? 



212 OLi t ui.jxv> QROMW'^^ 

Then came the night — and such a night 1 The mists fell cold and chill, 
The solemn tones of brooding winds were speaking on the hill. 
The hum of those two mighty hosts made stillness yet more still, 
And girt with mailed bands the strength of every iron will. 
I looked o'er all the cloudy heavens, but could not see a star, 
As there we lay, beneath the shades and crags of old Dunbar. 

It was a night for daring deeds ! dark clouds, and wind, and rain ; 

The full moon faintly touched the clouds, then veil'd her face again ; 

The sea moaned hoarse, but audibly — 'twas like a soul in pain ; 

And phantom sounds and phantom sights were scudding o'er the plain. 

I looked o'er all the cloudy heavens — I could not see a star, 

Nor light, save where a flickering torch shone o'er thy fields, Dunbar. 

We knew to-morrow's sun would shine upon a bloody field ; 

We could not hope that we could make those haughty thousands yield; 

We could but throw for our dear land our bodies as a shield, 

And charter with our faith and blood the faith our fathers sealed. 

If conquest fled afar from us, in this last gasp of war. 

We'd leave our bones to bleach for faith and freedom at Dunbar. 

The stertorous hum of drowsy life rose upward through the calm, 
And midst it rose from out the ranks some soldier's pious psalm ; 
And some, to quell their care, would list the preacher's loud alarm, 
Or muse if they that day might change the hauberk for the palm. 
Thus mount the fiery chariot, from the red smoke of war, 
And pass to take the crown of joy, from thy dread field, Dunbar. 

I could not sleep — I could not watch ; I passed the night alone. 
I mused — I could not sing, nor preach, nor bide the preacher's tone. 
Eternity seemed crowded there — things present, future, gone 1 
And dark and light, each sat by turns upon my spirit's throne. 
I knew by many a well-fought field the doom and dread pf war, 
But never doom or doubt so deep as that of old Dunbar. 

We thought of many a holy text and promise made of old, — 

Of Daniel in the lions' den (a sheep within the fold) : 

And how for Israel's tribes the waves to walls of safety roll'd. 

When they, like us, were hemmed and girt by foemen fierce and bold. 

We held that story to our hearts, like good news from afar ; 

The Lord would rise in might for us and conquer at Dunbar. 

We thought of him, — the captain strong, the mighty Jerubbaal, 

Who met the Midianitish host with numbers small and frail, — 

And while our lesser numbers lay along the misty vale, 

We pray'd that Gideon's sword and Lord would o'er our foes prevail. 

And while the moon roll'd murkily above thy fields, Dunbar, 

We thought of Him who rode above, old Israel's awful Fak ! 

For me — old Gideon haunted me ! — I saw his gleaming sword, — 
I heard the shout, I heard the cry, I felt the spirit's word. 
I heard the falling pitchers break, with one distinct accord ; 
I felt my own weak heart upheld by good news from the Lord ; 
" Thou canst not fail in this dread hour," said I, " O Lord of War 1 
Oh nerve our Gideon's arm to strike and conquer at Dunbar ! " 



\ APPENDIX. 213 

Should we so false or fickle prove, or do so mean a thing 

As hail " the young man Charles " to be our own anointed king ; 

To bow the knee to those proud Scots when they their Prince should 

bring, 
His lecherous, craven, coward glance along our land to fling ; 
And we to sink to faithlessness, or bide the blast of war, — 
Said I, No ! let us rot to death beneath thy cliffs, Dunbar. 

A tramp — a step — and then a voice : " Ha ! Captain, who goes there ? 
Why these, methinks, are precious hours to spend in words of prayer." 
Said I, " Lone hearts may catch the spark which numbers have to share." 
" 'Tis well," said he, and grasped my hand — oh, honor high and rare I 
It was the Gideon of our hosts, who led our ranks to war, — 
Our mighty Cromwell on his rounds the night before Dunbar. 



Hark ! was not that the bugle's blast ? I grasped a comrade's hand; 

Again that wild, swift, piercing scream — it swept along the strand ; 

It fell like lightning in the midst of Leslie's mighty band, — 

And where with us the heart lay cold the breath of faith was fanned ; 

It was the blast that summoned us to dare the blaze of war 

And wave aloft a bloody sword, high o'er thy field, Dunbar. 

Shout answered shout ! blast answered blast ! amid the twilight dim 
The dark gray curtain of the dawn hung bodingly and grim ; 
Midst hailing shot and dying screams arose the sacred hymn. 
My memory holds them — I was there — else all my senses swim ; 
But pride will pant within my heart, the prids and pomp of war, 
Whene'er I think of fight so dread and bloody as Dunbar. 

Then rose the hurtling cannon shower along the startled coasts, 

Then dashed on Lambert's iron-hearts through Leslie's scattered posts : 

Then rose their cry, "The Covenant!" 'mid sneers, and taunts, ani 

boasts. 
" The Lord of Hosts ! " our Captain cried : " The Lord, the Lord 

OF Hosts ! " 
The Lord that healed our aching hearts in many an ancient scar, — 
That was the word by which we fought and conquered at Dunbar. 

'Twas when the storm of fight was o'er, the battle almost done. 

From forth the sea, beyond the rocks, looked up the great red sun. 

Our General saw the flying hosts — " They Run ! " he cried, '* They 

Run! 
Let God arise and let His foes be scattered ! " — we had won. 
High o'er the plain his voice arose, we heard it near and far; 
So our good Lord Protector fought and conquered at Dunbar. 

Then, halting on the battle plain, he raised so clear and loud, 
A psalm of praise. Its mighty voice peal'd o'er the awe-struck crowd ; 
The warrior dropped his blood-red sword, the helmed head was bowed ; 
It reined at once the mailed hand and checked the passion proud ; 
It still'd the clash of sounding swords ; it still'd the passion's jar;— 
Oh, never saw the world a field like that of old Dunbar I 



,14 OLIV£:r'' CROMV^'LL, 



A]i me I ah me I those days are o er — the days of shame are here ; 
Our glorious Cromwell's mangled limbs, our Sidney's bloody bier; 
Our land in chains, our faith proscribed, — forgive this falling tear; 
My heart is strong, my faith is firm, my soul is dead to fear. 
A sword ! a field I who knows but we might see hope's rising star ? 
A sword I a field 1 our blow might be as stout as old Dunbar. 



No, no ! not that, those words are vain. War's bloody blazing star, 
It can not light to freedom's world or melt the dungeon's bar. 
Swords can not hew a way for truth, — they can not make, but mar ; 
They can not shiver nations' chains or dull hearts wake by war. 
I know — for this right arm was red with conquering near and far. 
And fain would I unfurl again the banner of Dunbar. 
NiBLEY, Gloucestershire, 1856. 



THE MARTYRDOM OF SIR HARRY VANE. 

" Great men have been among us, hands that penned, 
And tongues that uttered wisdom — better none, 
Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. 
These moralists could act and comprehend : 
They knew how genuine glory was put on ; 
Taught us how rightfully a nation shone 
In splendor : what strength was, that would not bend 
But in magnanimous meekness." 

— Wordsivorth. 

It was thought at first that he would have to walk to execution ; the 
sledge had not arrived. At length it came, and he said, " Any way, how 
they please ; I long to be at home, to be dissolved, and to be with Christ, 
which is best of all." He went downstairs from his chamber, and seated 
himself in the sledge, his friends and servants standing by him, and Sykes, 
his friend and biographer, accompanying him to the close. As they 
passed along it was like a royal procession ; shouts and gestures were made 
to him ; the tops of the houses were crowded, and all the windows thronged ; 
even the prisoners of the Tower, as he passed along, and the thronging 
multitudes by his side, and the people looking down on the procession, 
exclaimed, " The Lord go with you ; the great God of heaven and earth 
appear in you and for you." As he came within the rails of the scaffold, 
the pathetic voices of the people greeted him with like acclamations, 
crying out, " The Lord Jesus be with thy dear soul." 

His last words were, " Father, glorify Thy servant in the sight of men, 
that he may glorify Thee, in the discharge of his duty to Thee and to his 
country." Thereupon he stretched out his arms, in an instant swift fell 
the stroke, and the head of one of the greatest and purest beings that ever 
adorned our world rolled on the scaffold. So Sir Harry went away in his 
chariot to Heaven ; and Pepys tells us how he " went away to dinner i " 
A day or two after he tells us how " the talk was that Sir Harry Vane 
must be gone to Heaven, and that the King had lost more by that man's 



APPENDIX. 



215 



death than h<» will gain again in a good while." Sykes beautifully and 
pathetically says, "Cromwell's victories are swallowed up of death; Vane 
has swallowed up death itself in victory. He let fall his mantle, left his 
body behind him, that he had worn for nine-and-forty years, and has 
gone to keep his everlasting jubilee in God's everlasting rest. It is all 
day with him now — no night nor sorrow more ; no prison, nor death ! " 

Ho ! Freemen of London, awake from your sleep ! 

Ho ! Freemen I your slumbers are surely not deep I 

Awake ! there is treason afloat on the air. 

The morning is bright and the heavens are fair. 

But dark are the omens that mantle around, 

There is boding and dread in each murmuring sound. 

What turret gives yonder the boom of the bell ? 

'Tis the toll from the Tower, it is Liberty's knell, 

And the sun should be curtained in darkness and rain, 

For the day wakens up o'er the scaffold of Vane. 

'Twas the day when our Nero was throned for a king, 

If Nero be named by so shameless a thing ; — 

When the land, like a lazar-house, lay in despair, 

And vice, like a pestilence, haunted the air. 

Not long since the bloodhounds lay chained in despair, 

The lion was monarch ; they shrank from his lair. 

The lion was dead, but the bloodhounds for prey 

Made a feast of the monarch who had held them at bay; 

But to freshen their fangs with a blood rich in stain. 

They howled and they leaped round the scaffold of VaNB 

'Twas his morning of death, but he lay in a sleep, 

Like the slumbers of infancy, tranquil and deep ; 

And his face in his slumber reflected the light 

Of the phantoms that passed by his pillow at night. 

Sleep on ! 'tis thy last sleep — no more shall thine eye 

Close on scenes of the earth till it wakes to the sky j 

So freshen thy spirit, brave soldier, to bear 

The last frown of sorrow, the last glance of care ; 

And gird up thy spirit to front thy last pain. 

And let Time point with pride to the scaffold of Vank. 

Thro' the mind of the dreamer the shades of the past 
Were crowding and flitting so thronging and fast : 
Now the far Susquehanna's bright forests were seen, 
And the camps of the wilderness, glowing and green. 
He remembered the days of his youth ; but no sigh 
Proclaimed that remorse or confusion stood by. 
He can look on the past, but his spirit i^ f^till ; 
He has mounted his Pisgah, and far o'er the hill 
He beholds the contentions with sorrow, but joy, 
For the soul is erect, and they can not annoy. 
The winds they bl ow keen from the past, but in vain } 
They chill not the spirit or vision of Vane. 

He dreamed he was borne in his slumbers away 
To the proud hall of Ruf us, so hoary and gray ; 



3i6 OLIVER CROMWELL, 

Whose rafters resounded, long ages agone, 

To the shout and the wassail, the Conqueror's song. 

And he saw as he saw it when spread for the doom 

Of the King, and the judgment hung dark o'er the room ; 

And the phantoms of Cromwell and Bradshaw were there, 

As if living, — unshaken, unshadowed by care. 

And the King smiled in kindness, though sad as the day, 

On the couch where the sleeper so peacefully lay. 

It was but a moment, it brightened again. 

Ana the sun shone in light round the visions of Vane. 

******* 
Tis the first in the long Saturnalia of Blood ; 
The tiger is back, he is crying for food. 
The tongue of the Stuart is thirsting for gore, 
And the sweet taste of this shall give relish for more. 
For this shall his name, stiff with treason, go down 
With a stain on his robe and a curse on his crown, 
And the laureate that chanted his glory shall be 
A pander and traitor more bloody than he. 
This alone, if no otl>er, forever shall stain : 
He piled up the block and the scaffold of Vane. 

* * * * * * * 

They drew him along on the sledge through the crowd ; 
Each head was uncovered and solemnly bowed. 
Far up to the roofs of the houses were seen 
Mute mourners all wondering aghast at the scene. 
The loving and tender withheld not their tears, 
The faces of patriots were troubled with fears. 
And the cheeks of some spirits blazed forth with disdain : 
They, too, could have mounted the scaffold with Vane. 

They have drawn him along on his sledge through the crowd, 

He has mounted the scaffold with spirit unbowed. 

Some spirits can never their grandeur conceal ; 

The scourge and the scaffold their glory reveal ; 

And the eyes they strained deeply to glance on the .frame 

So wasted and feeble with sorrow and shame. 

Oh, it was not as Rome's latest Roman was there, 

'Twas the heart of the Christian defying despair, — 

So brave, so unbending, o'er bale and o'er bane. 

Oh, the throne of a king was the scaffold of Vane. 

How princely, how peerless he looked on that day, 
When the scaffold scowled grimly in bloody array; 
When the axe and the halberd so cruel and keen, 
To honor the Hero and Martyr were seen ; 
And the soldiers stood gazing in wonder and awe 
On the cheek that smiled calm o'er the axe and the law, 
And wondered to note that the fear and the blame 
Were the meed of the sheriff and headsman ; while shame 
Shrunk timid afar from the scaffold, to keep 
. A Royal companionship, noisy and deep. 
And left to the victim no sorrow or stain, 
But curtained with beauty the scaffold of Vane. 



APPENDIX. 217 

When tyrants their victims urge on to the tomb, 
The hearts of the people sink throbbing to gloom ; 
But the gloom is the dawn of the morn, and they see 
The Right — starting forth where a scaffold should be. 
Ho, tyrants ! Ho, traitors ! Behold it, for here 
The poor headless body must wait for its bier. 
What of that ? He has conquered by dying. The truth 
Has sprung from this block in the glow of its youth. 
Ho ! the chariot that waits when the martyrs are slain 
Hath passed to the skies with the spirit of Vane. 

Yet sad are our hearts when the noble and brave 

Pass down in their garments of blood to the grave ; 

While satyrs and vampires malignant are seen 

Dancing lewdly and wild where their grave should be green ; 

While vice, decked with roses, sits gay on its throne, 

And sings its lewd songs in its bacchanal tone, 

Meek Faith sinks to death with a spasm of pain, 

Or sighs as she sighed by the scaffold of Vane. 

Yet better by far is the scaffold of Vane 

Than the couch where Charles Stuart sank shrieking with pain; 

With a lie in his mouth and a lie on his heart, 

And a weak hand uplifted to ward off the dart ; 

And his harlot attendants, who pressed but to peep 

And to pillage his form, as. he slept his last sleep; 

With scoundrels and traitors to curtain the gloom. 

And a hireling Confessor to sneak through the room. 

Great God ! I had rather the scaffold of Vane. 

Or I'd rot to my death in a dungeon and chain.* 

* It is, perhaps, needless to say that this last verse, severe as it seems or sounds, 
merely describes the death-bed of Charles the Second ; a passage from John Eve- 
lyn's letters will, doubtless, occur to the memory of many readers. 

NiBLEY, Gloucestershire, 1856. 



INDEX. 



Age, Cromwell the pathfinder of his, 

t8 
Aikin, Lucy, "Memoirs of James I 

Court" referred to, 30 
Aims, Cromwell's, 21 
Alexander VII., Pope, and Blake, 166 
America, First English emigrants to, 

38 ; Sir H. Vance's flight to, 187 
Ancestry, early days, etc., of Crom- 
well, 20-39 
Anecdotes :— 
Charles II. and the blacksmith, 139 
Charles II. and the cook, 139 
" and the jack, 139 

Cromwell and the Bishop, in 

" and the Duke of Savoy, 171 

" and the Quaker, 170 

" and the monkey, 23 

" at Knaresborough, 19 

" Discipline of, in, 

" "Who will bring me this?" 

107-109 
Cromwell's wrestle with Charles I., 

22 
Cruelty of an Irish priest, 172 
De Retz on Cromwell, 17 
Dream, A singular, 27 
Drowning, an Escape from, 23 
Eliot, Sir J., and the secretary, 58 
Hall, A reason for perfuming, a, 136 
" If it were to see me hanged !" 116 
Kneeling, Serjeant and Sir H. Vane, 

202 
Leslie and the English soldier, 121 
Marston Moor fight, A story of, 94 
Mazarin and Madame Turenne, 174 
Muskerry, Lord, and George Rooke, 

146 
" One charge more, gentlemen," 

109, no 
" Our dear brother Oliver !" 174 
Present, A singular, 169 
Powder, Sitting on, 73 
Rupert and the prisoner, 93 
Shepherd and the noble infant, The, 

137 
South, Dr., and Charles II., 67 
Tiberius, A modern, 16 
Vote, Effects of a single, 66 
" Who is that sloven r' 15 

" Balance of Government," Vane's, re- 
ferred to, 205 
Basing, Taking of, referred to, 112 
Battle-cries, 83, 92, 124 



Battles, Marston Moor, 91 ; Naseby, 
107-112 ; Dunbar, 117 ; Worcester, 133- 
136 

Baxter's estimate of Sir H. Vane, 185 ; 
and Sir H. Vane, 191,104 

Beard, Dr., 25. 

Beauty combined with strength, 128 

Bedford Level, The draining of, 85- 
87 

" Biblia Polyglotta Waltorti," character 
of, 161 

Bishops' " Remonstance," The, 70 

Bisset, Andrew, on Cromwell and Dun- 
bar, 117, 119 

Blake, Admiral— birth and parentage, 
163 ; enters Parliament, 164 ; services 
in the West, 164 ; Character of, i6q ; 
enters the navy, 165 ; and Cromwell, 
165 ; engagement with Rupert, 165 ; 
naval reformer, 166 ; secures the su- 
premacy of the seas, 167 ; naval vic- 
tories, 167 ; letter to Cromwell, 167 ; 
capture of Spanish galleons, 167; 
achievements, 168 ; at Santa Cruz, 
168 ; death, funeral, and indignities 
to, 168 ; Clarendon's tribute to, 169 

Bletchington, The taking of, referred 
to, 107 

Body, Exhuming of Hampden's (note), 
90 

Bohemia, Queen of, marriage, 103 ; mis- 
fortunes, 104 

Boroughs, The rejected of three, 195 

Boscobel, The romance of, 138 

"Bottomless Bagge," Character of, 52, 
62 ; and "' Magna Charta," 56 

Boucher, Elizabeth, 34 

Brewer, Anthony, Comedy of, 25 

Brodie's " History of the British Em- 
pire" referred to, 12 

Broom, Van Tromp's standard of the, 
166 

Browning, Robert, quoted, 162 

Buckingham, Duke of, and Sir J. Eliot, 
40 ; interview between, 45 ; and Cap- 
tain Pennington, 47 ; character of, 50 ; 
and the St. Peter, 51 ; and the Cadiz 
Expedition,5i ; Charles I.'s letter con- 
cerning, 52 ; Eliot on, 53 ; impeach- 
ment, 53,54 ; and Wentworth, 58,59 

Buckingham, Duke of, at Worcester, 

133 
Bunyan and Sir H. Vane, 194 
Burial, Cromwell's, 182 
Burnet, Bishop, referred to, 205 



INDEX. 



219 



Cabinet, The Red Velvet, referred to, 

189 
Cadiz, Buckingham's expedition to, 51 
Calvert, Sir J., and Captain Nutt, 41 
Cambridge, Cromwell at, 32,33; re- 
turned to Parliament for, 66 ; prompt 
actions at, 78 
Cappadocia, St. George of, referred to, 

14 
Carisbrooke Castle, Sir H. Vane im- 
prisoned in, 193 ; works written in, 194 
Carlyle's estimate of Cromwell, 11 ; 
quoted, 32, 77, 80,98, 115; description 
of the battle of Dunbar, 120, 122; 
description of Cromwell at fifty-four, 
150 ; on the death of Cromwell, 178 
Castle Raby, Sir H. Vane at, 185 
Cavalier and Roundhead, 78 

" Prince Rupert an ideal, 105 
Cavaliers, Character of the, 83 
Ceremony, Cromwell and, 160 
Chalgrove, The fatal fight at, 88, 89 
Character, Opinions as to Cromwell's, 
8; Souihey's, 8; Forster's, 9-10; Car- 
lyle's, 11 ; Hume's, 12; Orme's, 13; 
Rogers', 13; Macaulay's, 13-14; a 
mythical, 14 
Charles I., Cromwell a cousin of, 19; 
a wrestle with, 24; England in the 
first years of, 44; and Captain Pen- 
nington, 47; letter to Parliament, 52; 
speech to Parliament, 53; Imprisons 
Eliot, 54, 61, 62; governs by preroga- 
tive, 56; debate on his claim to com- 
mit, 57; claims the Fens, 63; Crom- 
v/ell's opposition to, 63, 64; Short 
Parliament of, 65; attempt to seize 
the five members, 70, 71; flight to 
Hampton Court, 72; erects his banner 
at Nottingham, 72; and the nobility, 
97-98; sister of, 102-103; high hopes of 
success, 106;' desire to seize Crom- 
well, 107; in the north, 107; at Naseby 
fight, 109; letters seized, iii ; Crom- 
well's intentions toward, 144-145 ; 
falsity of, 145-146 
Charles H. proclaimed king of the 
Scots, 119 ; duplicity of. 119 ; invasion 
of England, 133; at Worcester City, 
133-164; conduct at the battle of 
Worcester, 135 ; character of his 
adventures, 136, 137; retreats and 
disguises, 138; and the blacksmith, 
139; and turning the jack, 1319; and 
the ready-witted cook, 139; gratitude 
of, 139; reward for Cromwell's life, 
176; restoration and reign of, 183; and 
Sir H. Vane, 201 
Cheshunt, Richard Cromwell retires 

to, 245 
Childhood, character of Cromwell's, 24 
Children, Cromwell's, 36; his love and 

concern for, 128 
Christian versus soldier, 18 
Civil War, Commencement of, 72 
Clarendon, Lord, quoted, 74, 81, 115, 
133, 134, 136, 139, 169; on the adven- 
tures and restoration of Charles H., 
139, 140 
Claypole, Death of Mrs., 178 



Cleveland, Anecdote hi the poet, 66 

Cockpit, The (note), 127 

Coke, Sir E., on iVIagna Charta, 58 

Committee, a war, 117-118 
" Nature of a, 142 

Commons, House of, and Eliot's im- 
prisonment, 54; exciting scene in, 60, 
61; privileges violated by the king, 

Commonwealth, The Achilles of the, 

131 

Compensation, A Divine, 176, 177 

Conscience, Cromwell and freedom of, 
154 

Contemporaries of Cromwell: Sir J. 
Eliot, 39; Pym, 73; Hampden, 131; 
Prince Rupert, 102; Sir H. Vane, 355 

Convictions, Religious, of Sir H. Vane, 
186 

Council, Cromwell's intended Protes- 
tant, 172 

Court, Cromwell's, 160 

Cromwell: — 
Opinions as to the character of 8-14; 
a mythic character, 14; the path- 
finder of his age, 15; Hampden's 
prophecy of, 15; greatness of, 15; 
place in English story, 15; fame of. 
Cardinal de Retz's opinion of, 17; 
unconscious greatness of, 17; a 
thorough Puritan, 18; his library, 
18; at Knaresborough, 19; ancestry, 
22; birth, 22; scenery and traditions 
of his infancy, 23; childhood, 23-25; 
at school, 23; wrestle with Charles 
I., 24; a singular dream, 25; acts in 
a comedy, 25; schoolmaster, 26; 
enters Cambridge, 32; death of his 
father, 33; marriage, 34; home life, 
34; removal to St. Ives, 35; hypo- 
chondria, 35; children, 36; removes 
to Ely, 37; future destiny of, 37; .in- 
tended emigration to America, 38; 
opposes the king's claims to the 
Fens, 63; Lord of the Fens, 64; 
contrasted with Hampden, 65; 
member for Cambridge, 66; Sir P. 
Warwick's description of, 67; Dr. 
South on, 67; training the Ironsides, 
76, 79; prompt action at Cambridge, 
78; advice to his troops, 81; at Mar- 
ston Moor, 90-102; anecdote of, ^4; 
at Newbury fight, 97; quarrel with 
Earl Manchester, 98; the Scots con- 
spire against him, 99-101; impeaches 
Earl Manchester, loi; and the Self- 
denying Ordinance, 101, 106; suc- 
cess of, 107; king's desire to capture, 
107; retained in command, 107; at 
Naseby, 106-112; rapid victories of, 
111-112; and the Bishop of Win- 
chester, . iii; strict discipline, in; 
honors conferred on, 112; invincible, 
112; commands the Irish expedition, 
1T3, 114, 115; leaves London in 
state, 115; takes Tredagh, 115; the 
curse of, 115; reception on return- 
ing from Ireland, 115, 116; at Dun- 
bar, 1 17-125 ; humanity of, 125; 
proclamation of, 126; the Macca- 



220 



INDEX. 



bseus of the Commonwealth, 131; 
judged from a wrong centre, 131; at 
Worcester, 132-137; the most capa- 
ble man, 142, 143; disperses the 
Rump Parliament, 143; speeches, 
144; speech to Ludlow, 144; inten- 
tions toward Charles I., 144-147; 
and the monarchy, 145; no republi- 
lican, 146: discovery of the falseness 
of Charles I., 146; Lord Protector, 
147; compared with Napoleon I., 
147; compared with Washington, 
148-149; inauguration as Lord Pro- 
tector, 150; at fifty-four, 150; urged 
to assume the crown, and letter on 
the subject, 151-152; speech on re- 
fusing the crown, 152-154; and 
freedom of conscience, 154; and re- 
ligious liberty, 155-159; domestic 
life, 159; court, 160; and Dr. Owen, 
160; and learning, 161-162; foreign 
policy, 162; and Spain, 162, 163, 175; 
and Admiral Blake, 165; and Cardi- 
nal Mazarin, 169; and the Vandois 
persecution, 171-173; the Huguenots 
appeal to, 172; scheme for a Prot- 
estant council, 173; compared with 
Gustavus Adolphus, 174; and Rome, 
174, 175; life sought, 176; unhappi- 
ness of, 176, 177; greatness thrust 
upon him, 177; fears of his Avife, 
177; mother dies, 177; death of his 
daughter, 177; illness, 177; last 
scenes, 178-179; death, 180; was he 
a failure? 180; estimate and work 
of, 181-182; burial, 182; the end, 
184; and Sir H. Vane, 190; difficult 
work of, 193 

Cromwell, Letters of: — 
To Mrs. St. John. 38; to Col. Walton, 
95-96; to Sir A. Hazlerig, 122; to 
General Leslie, 125; to his wife, 
127, 128, 129; to Bridget Ireton, 129- 
130; to Lord Fleetwood, 151 

Cromwell, Elizabeth, 84 

Cromwell, Richard, 176, 194; Vane's 
attack on, 193; abdication and retire- 
ment, 194 

Cromwell, Robert, 22 

Cromwell, Sir OHver, 21 

Cromwell, Thomas, 20; Life of Oliver 
Cromwell quoted, 79 

Cromwelliad, The, 17 

Crown, Cromwell urged to assume the, 
107; letter on the subject, 152; speech 
on the subject, 152-154 

Culpepper, Sir J., on the taxes, 70 

Curse of Cromwell, The, 115 

D'Aubign^ quoted, 113, 130 

Death, a soldier's, 96; Cromwell's, 178- 
181; Sir H. Vane's meditations on, 
198, 200 

De Retz's, Cardinal, opmion of Crom- 
well, 17 

Derby, Lord, Execution referred to, 

139 
Devizes taken by Cromwell, iii 
Devon, Sir J. Eliot, Vice-Admiral of, 

40 



Dickson, John, Offence and punishment 

of, 28 
Disraeli, Isaac, quoted, 62 
Dissent, Laws against Puritan, 45 
Donnington, The fight at, 97 ; escape of 

the Royalists after, 98 
Dream, a prophetic, 25 
Drowning, Cromwell's escape from, 22 
Dunbar, Bisset on the battle of, 117 ; 
position of the combatants, 121 ; 
Cromwell on the position, 122 ; fatal 
movement of the Scotts, 123 ; battle- 
cries, 124 ; the conflict, 124 ; trophies, 
124 
Dryden quoted, 65 

" Ecclesiastical Polity" referred to, 61 

Edinburgh Review referred to, 7 

Edward's " Gangrena" referred to, 155 ; 
"Treatise against Toleration" re- 
fered to, 155 

Elijah of the English Revolution, The, 
39 

Eliot, Sir J., Forster's life of, 39; birth 
of, 39; Vice-Admiral of Devon, 40; 
enters Parliament, 40; and Capt. 
Nutt, 41 ; imprisonment, 42 ; inter- 
view with Buckingham, 45, 46 ; and 
the St. Peter, 51 ; remarks on the 
king's letter, 53 ; on the value of the 
monarchy, 53 ; on the privileges of 
Parliament, 53 ; impeaches the Duke 
of Buckingham, 53, 54 ; imprison- 
ment, 54 ; release, 55 ; conspiracy 
against, 56 ; in the Gate House, 56 ; 
returned to Parliament, 56; on re- 
ligion. 57; rebukes the secretary, 58; 
and Wentworth, 5^; death of his wife, 
60 ; last speech in Parliament, 61 ; 
prisoner in the Tower, 61 ; " Mon- 
archy of Man'' referred to, 142 ; sick- 
ness and death, 62; vindictiveness of 
Charles to, 62 

Ely, Cromwell removes to, 37 

England during the first years of 
Charles L, 44 

England invaded by Charles IL, 132 

England, Old, 76 

England, The Patron Saint of, alluded 
to. 14 

England, what Cromwell saved her 
from, 131 

English and Scottish villages, 118 

English story, Cromwell's place in, 

15 
Enthusiasm, Cromwell enlists religious, 

154-161 
Essex, Earl of, Conduct of, 96. 97 
Everard's " Gospel Treasury' referred 

to, 194 
Execution of Sir H. Vane, 204-205 
Exeter taken by Cromwell, 112 

Fairfax, Lord, at Marston Moor, 91; 
and the Scottish command, ti6 

Fairfax, Sir Thomas, Parliamentary 
general, 102-106 ; commission to Crom- 
well, 1C7 ; at Naseby, 109 

Faith, Cromwell a defender of the, 171 

Fame, Durability of Cromwell's, 16 



INDEX. 



"Farewell to Brighton Bells," quoted, 

Felton. Tohn, 60 , . • 

Fens, The region of the 22; draining 
of the, 63; the king claims the, 64, 
Lord of the, 64 
Fidelity, A story of, 137 
Fifth Monarchy men, 155 . 

Finch, Lord Keeper, speech to Parlia- 
ment, 164 ^, , -- 
Fisher, Lady, and Charles IL, 140 
Five Members, Attempt to arrest the, 71 
Fleetwood, Lord, Cromwell s letter to, 

Fleming! John, OiTence and punish- 
ment of, 28 
Folio, An Old, 17 . ^ c- u \i^^c. 

Forster, Chief Justice, and Sir H. Vane, 

Forster, John estimate of Cromwell, 9; 
on James I., 3°; Life of Ehot re- 
ferred to, 39; Lives of statesmen 
referred to, 9-10; quoted, 21, 29, 32, 
4^, 68, 82, 124, 180^ 185 
Fox, George, and Cromwell, 160 
FraAce in the days of Cromwell, 170, 

and the Vaudois persecution, 173 
Freedom and Europe in Cromwell s 

day, 163 
Galleons, Spanish, captured by Blake, 

167 
Gambling, Returning money won in, 37 
Gate House, Sir J. Eliot imprisoned in, 

Geddes, Jenny, alluded to, 120 
Generals, Conduct of the Parliamentary', 

cTnilemans Magazine referred to, 90 
Gift, James L and the Free, 3^ ^ 
Goodricke's, Sir J., Anecdote of Crom- 

well, 19 , , r 

George, Sir F., Noble conduct of, 49 
Goring, Lord, at Taunton, 164 
Grandeur, True, 16 . t a^a 

Greatness, Unconscious, 16, 17; founded 

on disorder, 144 n . 

Guizot's estimate of Cromwell, 10, 

quoted, 69, 106, 113, 144 , . . 

Gustavus Adolphus compared with 

Cromwell, 574 
Gustavus of the seas, A, 168 

Hall, Perfuming Worcester, 136 
Hallam quoted, 141 . _ ^^^^ 

Hampden, prophecy concerning Crom- 
well ir, and Cromwell as playmates, 
26- and Cromwell contrasted, 65; and 
the ship-money, 68; ancestry of, 84; 
early life and marriage, 85; career in 
Parliament. 86; character, 86; achara- 
pion of liberty, 87; Humes charge 
against, 87; the three stages of his 
life 88; death, 88, 89; ancestral home, 
89, 90; body exhumed (note), 88, 89 

Hartlib and Cromwell, 161 

Heath, Carrion, 24 

Hebrew of the Hebrews, A, 18 

Henry IV. of France, assassination re- 
ferred to, 26 



Henry VIH. and Richard Williams, 20 
Herbert, Lord, Cromwell's reference 

to, 128 
Hinchinbrook, Festivities at, 21 
Holland humbled by Blake, 166 
Home-life of great men, 33, 34; Crom- 
well's. 38, 158 , , „ 
Home, Hampden's ancestral 89 
Horsewhip, Blake's standard of the, i56 
Household, The Puritan, 83, 84 
Howe, John, and Cromwell, 160 
Huguenots, Appeal of, to Cromwell, 172 
Humanity of Cromwell, 124 
Hume's estimate of Cromwell, 10: 

quoted, 34, 86 
Huntingdon, birthplace of Cromwell, 
23; Cromwell at the Grammar School 
of, 24; Member for, 65 
Hutchinson, Mrs., quoted 78 
Hypochondria, Cromwell s fits of ,35, 36 
Hypocrisy, Hampden accused of, 87 

Impeachment of Buckingham, 57, 54 . 
Imprison, Debate on Charles I. s claim 

to, 58, 59 ^ 

Incendiary, Cromwell an, 100 

Independents, 98 ^ 

Infancy, Cromwell s, 23 

Invincible, Cromwell the, 112 ^^" 

Ireland, Cromwell sent to, 113; otate 
of, in 1649, 113; Cromwell made Lord 
Governor. 115; Cromwell's success in, 
115, 116; Cromwell's return from, 116 

Ireton at Naseby, 107, 108, 109 

Ireton. Bridget, Cromwell's letter to, 
129, 130 

Irish, How Cromwell dealt with, 114, 

Ironsides, Training of, 76-79; Crom- 
well's account of the, 79; Forster s 
account, 82; character of, 82, 83 

Islip Bridge, Fight at, referred to, 106 

Tames I. at Hinchinbrook, 21; character 
of, 27; Henry IV. on, 29; personal 
appearance, 29, 32; and the Puritan 
deputation, 30; extravagance of, 31; 
claims to learning, 31; superstition, 
31; and Parliament, 43; last Parlia- 
ment of, 44; death, 44 



Kneeling, Serjeant, and Sir H. Vane. 

202 
King, N®minal and Real, 143 
King, On the word of a, iii 
"KingPym," 73 ^ „ 
King, The uncrowned, 7-8 
King versus Parliament, 53, 54 
Knaresborough, Cromwell at, 19 

Landor, W. S., " Imaginary Conversa- 
tions," referred to, 21 
Lane, Jane, and Charles II., 139 
Laud, Arch., and Sir H. Vane, 187 
Law and the King, The, 143, 144 ^ ^ 
Learning, Cromwell's 18 ; fostered by 

Cromwell, 160, 161 
Leslie, General, at Dunbar, 119, and 
the prisoner, 121; Cromwell's letter 
to, 125, 126 



222 



INDEX. 



Letter, Charles II., on Sir H. Vane, 201 

Letters, CromweU'j.!, 12, 159 ; the king's 
cabinet of, 11 1 

Liberty versus absolutism, 70; Hamp- 
den, a champion of, 86 ; Cromwell's 
ideas of religious, 155; correspond- 
ence and speeches on, 155, 156 

Library, Cromwell's, 18 

Life, Conflicting theories of Cromwell's, 
7-19 

Life, Cromwell's sought after, 176 

Lily, the astrologer, referred to, 45 

Lingua^ The comedy of, 25 

Lintz Castle, Rupert a prisoner at, 104 

Literature, Present religious, 18 

Lockhart, the ambassador to France, 
172 

London, The plague in, 45; a great 
storm in, 55; Cromwell's departure 
from, in 1649, 114; alarm in, at Charles 
XL's invasion, 132 

" Lord of the Fens," Cromwell called, 
64 

Louis XIV. and Cromwell, 174 

" Love of God and Union with God," 
Vane's referred to, 193 

Love-story, A prisoner s, 104 

Loyalty versus Liberty, 77 

Ludlow and Cromwell, 144 

Lying, Give up, 146 

Lytton, Lord, quoted, 74 

MacOdeghan, treachery of, 114 
Macaulay, estimate of Cromwell, 13; 

quoted, 80, no 
" Magna Cnarta," Eliot and Bagge on, 

56 
" Magnatia," Mathew Cotton's, referred 

to, 194 
" Malleus Monachorum," 21 
Man, Cromwell the most capable, 142, 

143 
Man, The child the father of the, 23, 24 
Manchester, Earl of. Conduct of, 96, 97; 
quarrel with Cromwell, 98; impeach- 
ed by Cromwell, loi 
Manton quoted, 18, 19 
Maria Henrietta, clause in 4ier mar- 
riage treaty, 47 ; flight of, 104 
Marriage, Cromwell s, 34, 35 
Marston Moor, 90; night before the 
battle of, 91; battle of, 92, 94; spoils, 
94; scene, after the battle, 94; a tra- 
dition of the battle, 94, 95 
Marvell, Andrew, and Cromwell, 161 
Massachusetts, Vane Governor of, 187 
Massacre, The Irish, 113, 114 
Maurice, Prince, and Blake, 164 
Maynard's reply to the Scotch Chan- 
cellor, lOI 
May's "History of the Long Parlia- 
ment" quoted, 87 
Mazarin, Cardinal, and Cromwell, 169; 

and Madame Turenne, 174 
Men, Cromwell and great, 161, 162 
Men, Providential appearance of great, 

16 
" Mercurius Aulicus" referred to, 81 
Milton quoted, 35, 50, 99, 190; and 
Cromwell, 162; sonnet on Vane, 190 



Monarchy, Eliot on the nature of, 53 ; 

Cromwell and the idea of, 145 
Monkey, Cromwell in peril with the 

23 
Monopolies, 44, 68 
Montrose referred to, 107 
Mother, Fears of Cromwell's, 176; 

death of, 177, 178 
Mounting, Unconscious, 18 

Napoleon I., Cromwell compared to, 

147 
Naseby, Village of, 108; the old table 

at, 108 
Naseby, Battle of, 106; night before 'the, 

107; battle-cries, 108, 109; Rupert at, 

109; Cromwell at, 108, I to; Charles I. 

at, 109; Macaulay's ballad of, quoted, 

no; spoils, in 
Nation, On one man hangs the destiny 

of a, 142 
Navy, Sir H. Vane treasurer of, 188 
Needham, Marchmont, on Cromwell, 

8d 
Newbury, Fight at, 98; royalist retreat 

from, 98 
Newcastle, General, at Marston Moor, 

93' 94 

Newcastle, Cromwell's letter to the 
governor of, 122 

Nismes, Huguenots of, and Cromwell, 
172 

Nobility and the popular cause. The, 97 

Noble quoted, 23 

Nominal and real King, 143 

Notes, Foot, 12, 20, 22, 29, 75, 89, 96, 127, 
139, 150, 154, 171, 193 

Nottingham, The king s standard erect- 
ed at, 72 

Nugent's " Life of John Hampden" 
quoted, 86 

Nutt, Captain, Career of, 41; captured 
by Eliot, 41; freedom of, 42; auda- 
city of, 43 

Oak, The Boscobel, 139 ' 
"Oceana," Harrington's, referred to, 

194 
Oliver versus Richard, 176 
Ordinance, The Self-denying, 149 
Orme, W., Estimate of Cromwell, 12. 13 
Ormond, Marquis, in Ireland, 114 

Parliament and James I., 117; Charles 
I., first, 45; Charles I., letter to, 52; 
Eliot's remarks on, 53; versus king, 

54 

Parliament, third of Charles I., 56; 
king's speech to. 53; Eliot's speech 
in, 57, 58; Subsidies granted by, 58 ; 
exciting scenes in, 60, 61 

Parliament, The Short, 64; men com- 
posing it, 65; Hampden and Crom- 
well's appearance in, 65, 66 

Parliament, The Long, 68, 86; thejwork 
of, 68; the King and the, 69; subsi- 
dies voted, 70; the King's violation 
of, 71 

Parliament, Fighting for the, 82 

Parliament, The|Rump, 142; unpopu- 



;! 



IhWEX. 



223 



larity of, 142; dispersed by Cromwell, 

Parliament versus Cromwell, 146 
Parliament, The Little, 149 
Parliamentary Debates referred to, 171 
Parliaments, A Bill for triennial, 69 



Peace in unrest, i 



Ih 



"Pearl of Britain," The, 103 

Peasantry, Cromwell and the Scotch, 
120 

Peel, Sir R., Lord Beaconsfield on, 73 
' Penderels and Charles IL, The, 139, 140 

Penning-ton, Capt., Conduct of, 47, 49 

Pepys quoted, 205 

Petition of Rights referred to, 61 

Phillips, Speech of, 50 

Pirates, Turkish, of the 17th century, 
46 

Plague, London during the, 45 

Poetical quotations, 65, 89, no, 138, 149, 
162, 183, 185, igo, 198 

Policy, Cromwell's foreign, 162, 176 

Powder, Sitting on, 73 

Power, Cromwell's foreign, 162, 176 

Prayer, Sir H. Vane's, 203 

Prerogative, Governing by, 56, 69 

Present, A singular, 170 

Presbyterianism, Aim of the Scots to 
impose, 119 

Presbyterians, The, 98, 99 

Prisoner, Prince Rupert and the, 93; 
Leslie and the, 122 

Protector, Lord, Cromwell, 147; Inau- 
guration, 150 

Protestantism, Spain's persecution of, 
163; Cromwell's scheme for the bene- 
fit of, 173 

Protestants of Rochelle and England, 
49; persecution of Irish, 113, 114 

" Protestation," The Bishops', 70 

Pulteney's anecdote of Cromwell, 170 

Puritan cause, A champion of the,- 
11; Cromwell a thorough, 18; laws 
against dissent, 44, 45 ; womanhood 
84 ; household, 159 

Puritanism, The knighthood of, 78 

Puritans and James L, 30 

Pym, John, 73 ; greatest Member of 
Parliament, 73 ; birth and antecedents, 
73; speech to Lord Clarendon, 74; 
work in the Long Parliament, 74, 76 ; 
and the impeachment of Strafford, 75 

Quaker and Cromwell, The, 170 
Quarterly Review referred to, 12 
'• Queen of Hearts," The, 103 

Raby Castle, Sir H. Vane at, 186 
Raleigh, Sir W., referred to, 26 ; exe- 
cution of, 30 
Real king, 143 

Rebellion, The Irish Catholic, 113, 115 
Reform Bill, Sir H. Vane's, 190 
Reformer, Blake a naval, 166 
Reign, Character of James I.'s, 32 
Religion, Eliot on, 57, 58 
" Reliquiae Baxteriana'' quoted, 81 
Remonstrance, The Grand, 55, 56, 71 
Republican, Cromwell not a, 145 
K^Oublicans, A Parliament of, 19^? 



"Retired Man's Meditations," Sir H. 

Vane's, 194 
Revolution, The Elijah of the English, 

40 
Reynolds, Dr., and James I., 31 
Richelieu, Cardinal, and Rochelle, 47 
Rights, The Petition of, 59 
Rochelle Protestants and England, 46 
Rogers, Henry, Estimate of "Cromwell, 

13 
Rogers, Samuel, quoted, 89 
Romance and Fact, 81 
Romanism, Cromwell's hatred of, 26 
Rome, Cromwell's dealings with, 174. 

Rose, Thomas, Offence and punishment 

of, 29 
Ross, Fate of the Bishop of, 115 

Roundhead, Origin of the term, 79 
Royalist commanders, Division amongst, 

133 
Rupert, Prince, at Marston Moor, 90, 94; 
characteristics of, 103; parentage, 104, 
birth and ancestry, 104; an Austrian 
prisoner, 105; and the jailor' s daugh- 
ter, 105; character, 105; personal ap- 
pearance, 106; impetuosity, 106; at 
Naseby, io2, in; 'Charles I.'s evil 
genius, 109; defeated by Blake, 174 

"Saints' Everlasting Rest" referred to, 
194 

Santa Cruz, Blake's action at, 169 

Savoy, Duke of, and Cromwell, 171, 174 

Scenery of the Civil Wars, 77 

Scilly Isles, Sir H. Vane imprisoned in, 
197 

Schoolmaster, Cromwell's, 26 

Scotch Commissioners, Cromwell's cor 
respondence with, 155, 157 

Scotland, Lord Chancellor of,and White- 
lock, 100, 102 

Scottish and English Villages, 117, 118 

Scots at Dunbar, The, 123; battle-cry of 
the, 124; Cromwell's proclamation to, 
126 

Seas, State of, in Cromwell's day, 175 

Secretaries, Cromwell's, 161 

Selden. John, quoted, 160 

Severn and Teme rivers, 134, 135 

Shakespeare, Date of the death of, 32 

Shepherd and infant. The, 136 

Sheridan quoted, 142 

Ship money, Hampden's opposition to. 
68 

Shipton, Mother, A prophecy of, 92 

Sloven ? Who is that, 15 

Soap, The monopoly of, 68 

Soldiers, Character of Rupert's, 83; Eng- 
lish at Dunbar, 117, 118 

" Sordello," Browning's, quoted, 162 

South, Dr., quoted, 67 

Southey's estimate of Cromwell 8; on 
Strafford's impeachment, 75 

Sovereignty of Cromwell, 16 

Spain and Cromwell, 30; and England, 
44; in the age of Cromwell, 163, 169; 
intolerance of, 163; power of, 170; 
Cromwell's treatment of, 170 

Speeches, Character of Cromwell's, 144 

St. Bartholomew. The Hibernian, 113 



224 



INDEX. 



St. Germains, Birthplace of Eliot, 40 
St. Ives, Cromwelrs life at, 35; The 

Farmer of, 208 
St. John, Mrs. Cromweirs letter to, 38 
St. Peter, Case of the, 50 
Sterry's "Rise, Race, Royalty, etc." 

referred to, 104 
Steward, Elizabeth, 20 
Stewarts, Ancestors of the, 20 
Stoughton, Dr., "Church under the 

Civil Wars" referred to, 76 
Strafford, Earl of, Impeachment of, 69, 

75; and Pym, 76 
Superstition of James I., 31 
Supremacy, James I. and kingly, 31 
Sidney, A., "Science of Government" 

referred to, 143 
Sykes' "Evangelical Essays" referred 

to, 194 
Sykes' Biography of Vane quoted, 205 
Table, An historic, 108 
"Tactus," Cromwell in the character 

of, 25 
Tagus, Rupert's defeat at, 165 
Taxes, Sir J. Culpepper on, 70 
Tennant, F., Offence and punishment 

of, 28 
Theology, A knovvledge of Cromwell's, 

necessary, 18 
Thurloe quoted, 177, 180 
Tiberius, A modern, 54 
Toleration and the Presbyterians, 155, 

156 
Tonnage and Poundage Bill, 49, 50, 51, 

52 
Tower, Eliot's life in the, 62 
Townley family, A tradition in, 95 
Tracts, nature of the Boscobel, 138 
Trade, Declaration of the committee of, 

61 
Treaty, The French, and Cromwell, 173 
Tredagh, Taking of, 115 
Trent, Charles II., refuge at, 139 
Trial, Sir H. Vane's 200, 202 
Tripoli, Bey of, and Blake, 168 
Tromp, Van, and Blake, 166 
Tunis, Bey of, and Blake, 167 
Turenne, Madame and Mazarin, 173 
Turkish Rovers, Ravages of, 46 
Usurper, Cromwell the, 142 
Vane, SirH., claims for remembrance, 
185; character, 185, 186; at Raby Cas- 
tle, 187; parentage and religious con- 
victions, 186; flight and sojourn in 
America, 187; return to England, 187; 
marriage and enters Parliament, 188; 



Treasurer of the Navy, 188; and Straf- 
ford's papers, 188; as politician and 
ruler, 189, 190; Reform Bill, 190; Mil- 
ton's sonnet on, 190; and Cromwell, 
191; resemblance to Baxter, 191; the 
"Healing Question," 192; imprison- 
ment, 192; writings, 194; re-enters 
Parliament, 195; and his fellow repub- 
licans, 195, 196; attack on Richard 
Cromwell, 196, 197; arrest and impris- 
onment, 197; meditation on death, 198, 
199; trial, 200; prayer for his family, 
203; execution, 203; last words, 204; 
estimate and work of, 205, 206; the 
martyrdom of, 210 
Vanguard, The sailors of the, 47-50 
Vaudois persecution and Cromwell, 171, 

174 
Victories, A series of brilliant, in, H2 
Villages. Scottish and English, ii8s 119 
Vote, Effects of a single, 67 
Waller quoted (note), 198 
Walton, Colonel, Cromwell's letter to, 

95,96 
Warburton, Eliot, quoted, 11, 15^ 
Wars, Commencement of the Civil, 72; 
scenery of the, 77; Carlyle on, 77; pre- 

W paring for, 78; disastrous effects of, 87 
arwick. Sir P., Memoirs of, quoted, 67 
Washington and Cromwell compared, 

148, 149: work of each, 193 
Watchwords, Battle, 83 
Weldon's character of James I. quoted, 

Went worth. Sir T., 40; on the Petition 
of Rights, 58, 59 

Whitelocke's account of the plot against 
Cromwell, 100 

Wife, Fears of Cromwell's, 177 

Williams, Dr. Kewar, portraits of Crom- 
well (note), 150 

Williams, Richard, 20 

Winchester, The Bishop of, iii 

Witchcraft and James I., 31 

Witch-haunted region. A, 22 

Womanhood, Puritan. 84 

Wood, Anthony, on Sir H. Vane, 185 

Worcester, Charles II. at, 133; Crom- 
well, 134; royalist army at, 134; state 
and position of the city, 135; Battle of, 
135, 137; of to-day, 137 

Words, Sir H. Vane's last, 205 

Work, Unseen, 162; estimate of Crom- 
well's, 182, 183 

Wyndham, Mistress, quoted, 137 

York, 90] The city of, 117 



RICHMOHD TOOTH CROWS. 

Artificial Teetlj without Plates. 

The necessity of Extraction entirely 
avoided. 

The Greatest Blessing to those Suffering from 
Decayed or Broken Teeth. 

The Richmond Tooth Crown entirely obviates the ne- 
cessity of extracting teeth, does away with artificial plates, 
prevents the -suffering caused by decay of the teeth and consequent 
extraction of roots, and avoids the pain and excessive annoyance 
of a plate. 

By this method roots of teeth which are still firm in position 
may be restored to perfect usefulness and beauty, and made so 
solid til at they will perform the office of mastication like the nat- 
ural teeth. 

If but foTTr firm roots still remain in proper position we can 
attach an entire set of teeth to them, and restore the mouth to its 
original beauty and comfort, without the use of a plate. 

Besides this, our specialty, we perform with care every oper- 
ation known to the art of dentistry. 

When tlie roots Iiave been extracted, we replace teeth upon plates. 
For those who desire a more expensive and elegant imitation of the 
n/jtural teeth, we can model and carve porcelain, teeth to correspond 
with the features and color them to suit tJie age, making them so 
natural that detection is impossible. 

All are respectfully invited to call and examine these beautiful 
operations and judge of their merits. Out-of-town visitors are 
especially invited. 

Our prices are CASH, half in advance, balance when complet 
ed. We can afford to place our fees at extremely low figures, aa 
we do entirely a cash business. 

RICHMOND TOOTH CROWN CQ 

L.T. SHEFFIELD, Treasurer and iVIanager. 

Offices: 24 and 26 West 32d Street, New York: 72 State 
Street, New London, Conn. 



Use T>r. SJieffielcVs Creme Dentifrice, 

Large Packag-es, 25 cents. By Mail, 30 cents. For Sale by all 
Druggists. Send for circular. No. 2G West 32d S» 

1 




THE BEST ARTICLE KNOWN 

For Easy Washing, 

In Hard or Soft, Hot or Cold Water, 
WITHOUT HARM TO FABRIC OR HANDS 



EVERY LADY IN THE LAND should acquaint herself with its 
utility. Never before has a Household Article met with such 
WONDERFUL SUCCESS, and the demand is steadily grow- 
ing. It suits all classes; and even LADIES that are not house- 
keeping, find it convenient for washing jewelry and other 
small articles in their rooms. 

Sold by all Grocers, but see that DANGEROUS IMITATION^ 
are not pressed upon you. 

JAMES PYLE, New York. 



LOVEL L'S LIB RARY. 

Under the title of " LoveWs Library; a Weekly J^iblicatlon,'" the nndersigned 
have commenced the publication of all the best works in Cun-ent and Standard 
Literature. 

It is believed that this issue will be found superior to anything heretofore 
attempted, especially in the following points : 

Mret.— The type will be larger and the print consequently clearer. 

Second.— The size being the popular 12mo, will be found much more pleasant 
and convenient to handle. 

Third. — Each number will have a handsome paper cover; and this, in connec- 
tion with the size, will make it worthy of preserv^ation. 



NUMBERS NOW READY 



.20 



1. Hyperion, by Longfellow, 

2. Outre-Mer, by Longfellow, 

3. The Happy Boy, byBjOmeon - 

4. Arne. by BjOrnson, - 

5. Frankenstein, by Mrs. Shelley, 

6. The Last of the Mohicans, 

7. Clytie, by Joseph Hatton, 

8. The Moonstone, by Wilkie Col- 

lins, Part I, - - - - 

9. Do. Part II, - - - 

10. Oliver Twist, by Dickens, 

11. The Coming Race: or the New 

Utopia, by Lord Lytton, 
13. Leila; or the Siege of Granada, 
by Lord Lytton, ... 

13. The 'I'liree Spaniards, by George 

Walker, - - - - - .20 

14. The Tricks of the Greeks Un- 

veiled, by Robert Houdin, - 

15. L'Abbe Constantin, by Ludovic 

Ilalevy, Author of "La Fille 
de Mme. Angot," etc. - 

16. Freckles, by Rebecca Fergus 

Redcliff. A new original 
storv, 

17. The Dark Colleen, by Mrs. 

Robert Buchanan, 

18. They Were Married I by Walter 

Besant and James Rice, 

19. Seekers after God, by Canon 

Farrar, . . . - - 

20. The Spanish Nun, by Thos. De 

Quincey, .... 

21. The Green Mountain Boys, by 

Judge D. P. Thompson, 

22. Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe, - 

23. Second Thoughts, by Rhoda 

Broughton, . - - . 

24. The New Magdalen, by Wilkie 

Collins, 

25. Divorce, by Margaret Lee, 

26. Life of Washington, by Leonard 

Henley, - - . - - 

27. Social Etiquette, by Mrs. W. A. 

Saville, - 

28. Single Heart and Double Face 

by Chas. Reade, 
29 Irene; or the Lonely Manor, - 



.10 
.10 
.10 
.20 
.20 

.10 

.10 
.20 

.10 

.10 



.20 



.10 
.20 



10 



20 



20 
. .15 



.20 



30. Vice Versa, by F. Anstey, 

31. Ernest Maltravers, by Lord Lyt- 

ton, 

32. The Haunted House and Cal- 

deron the Courtier, by Lord 
Lytton, 

33. John Halifax, by Miss Mulock, 

34. 800 Leagues on the Amazon, by 

Jules Verne, - - . - 

35. The Cryptogram, byJulesVenio 

36. Life of Marion, by Horry and 

Weems, 

37. Paul and Virginia, - 

38. Tale of Two Cities, by Charles 

Dickens - - - • - ,20 

39. The Herm'its, by Rev. Charles 
Kingsley, - - . - - .20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, and 

Marriage of Moira Fergus, by 
Wm. Black, - - - - .10 

41. A Marriage in High Life, by 

Octave Feuillet, • - - .20 

42. Robin, by Mrs. Parr, - - - .20 

43. Two on a Tower, by Thomas 

Hardy, ----- .20 

44. Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson, - 

45. Alice: or the Mysteries, being 

Part II of Ernest Maltravers, 

46. Duke of Kandos, by A. Mathey 

47. Baron Munchausen, - - - 

48. A Princess of Thule, by Wm. 

Black. 

49. The Secret Despatch, Grant, 

50. Early Days of Christianity, by. 

Canon Farrar, D.D., Parti, 

" n, 

51. Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver 

Goldsmith. . - . - 

52. Progress and Poverty, by Henry 

George, .20 

53. The Spy, by J. Fenimore Coop- 

er, .20 

54. East Lvnne, by Mrs. Henry 

Wood, .20 

55. A Strange Story, by Lord Lyt- 

ton, .!-0 

56. Adam Bede, by Geo. Eliot, Pt. I .15 

" " " " "II .15 



.20 



10 



10 



10 



Many of the above are also bound handsomely in cloth, gilt, price 50 cents. 
Catalogue sent on application. 



l^New York: JOHN W, LOVELL CO., 14 & 16 Vesey St. 

8 



The World's 

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY. 

Cyclopedias of Biography are usually made up of an alphabetical list of names, 
with brief eketclies, composed principally of the iinmes of people of whom you have 
never heard, and of whom kuowleuge would add neither to your pleasure nor 
to your mental wealth. 

The Vv'orld's Cyclopedia of Biography contains only the ptories of the lives 
of the celebrated men and women who have made the world's history, written by 
authors often equally emin'.nt, in the field of literature, with the subjects they 
describe. 

Volume I— Large 12mo, about 800 pages, good type, handsomely printed and 
bound, contains : Chaucer, by Prof. A. W. Ward ; Burns, by Principal Shairp ; 
Spenser, by the Dean of St. Paul's; Byron, by Prof. Nichol ; Milton, by Mark Patti- 
8on; Scott, by R. H. Hutton. Extra cloth, 80 cents; half Eussia, red edges, $il-0O. 
Volume II— Large 12mo, about 800 pages, good type, handsornely printed and 
bound, contains : Johnson, by Leslie Stephen ; Wordsworth, by J . Myers; Gold- 
smith, by William Black; Shelley, by J. A. Syraonds; Pope, by Leslie Stephen; 
Cowper, by Goldwin Smith: Southey, by Prof. Dowden. Extra cloth 80 cents; 
half Russia, red edges, SLOO. 

Volurae III— Large 12mo, about 800 pages, good type, handsomely printed 
and bound, contains: Locke, by Thomas Fowler; Hume, by JProf. Huxley; I)e Foe, 
by William Minto; Gisbon, by J. C. Morrison: Burke, by John Morley; Thack- 
eray, bv A. Trollope ; Bunyan, by J. A. Froude. Extra cloth, 80 cents ; half 
Russia, fed cloth, $1.00. 

Volum.e rV— Large 12mo, about 750 pages, good type, handsomely printed 

and bound, contains : Extra cloth, 70 cents ; half Russia, red edges, 90 cents. 

The Life op George Washington ; a new and extremely interesting work, by an 

eminent living General, who writes under the n07n cUplume of Leonard Henley. 

The Life of General Francis Marion, by General Horry and M. L. Weems. 

An old standard of thrilling interest. 
The Life of Oliver Cromwell, his times, battlefields, and contemporaries, by 
Edwin Paxton Hood, author of "Thomas Carlyle," " The Romance of Biog- 
raphy," etc. A life of almost peei'less interest, depicted by an authoi' of rare 
ability. 
Volume V— Large octavo, extra large tvpo. very handsome, about 841 pages, 
contains : Price, in extra cloth, Sl.fiO ; in half Russia, red edges. $1-85. 
The Achievements of Celebrated Men ibeing brief and brilliant sketches of 
most noted achievements and incidents in the lives of more than 100 eminent 
men ; statesmen, soldiers, inventors, discoverers, poets, philanthropists, 
authors, travellers, etc... by James Parton. A more thoroughly entertaining 
book of BiograpJiv has perhaps mrer been ziriiten. 
Other volumes in The World's Cyclopedia of Biography, each volume as a 
rule, being complete in itself, will soon be added to the above list. 

A Great Oifer. 

The present issue of Lovell's Library is printed from the same plates as the 
Life of Cromwell, in Vol. IV, of the World's Cyclopedia of Biography, and 
shows the large and handsome typography of that volume, which is, however, 
printed on better paper, very handsomely, with wide margins, and very neatly and 
strongly bound. With a view to getting specimen volumes into the hands of cus- 
tomers in all parts of the United States, the practical result of which is that each 
customer becomes a club agent, and secures additional sales for us, I make the 
following special offer • 



GOOD FOR FIFTEEN CENTS. 

Until April 1st, 1883. 

Any purchaser of the present number of Lovell's Library, who will cut 
out this slip and return the same to me, on or before April 1. 1883, either direct 
or through any newsdealer or bookseller who will forward the same, will receive 
credit for the sum of fifteen cents, (being the price of this number), towards the 
price of Volume IV, of The World's Cyclopedia op Biography, in either style 
of binding, as above described. Address, JOHN B. ALDEN, Publisher, 18 
Vesey Street. NewYor^ P. O. Box 1227. 



A Clu"b ^^ent is wanted in every neighborhood. Full descriptive catalogue 
with particulars of the large inducements given, will be sent free upon request. 

JOHN B. ALDEN, Publisher. 
p. O. Box 1287. 4 18 Vesey Street, New York, 



NOVELS BY 

THE fiUCHESS, 

All of which are now issued in Lovell's Library, in 
handsome 12nio form, for 

Yiz : 

Portia, 6^' By Passions Hocked^ 
Phyllis, 

Molly Bawn, 

Airy Fairy Lillian, 

Mrs. Geoffrey, Etc., Etc. 



The works by The Duchess have passed, and far passed, all 
competitors in the race for popularity and admirers. Editions 
after editions have rapidly succeeded each other, bo-th in England 
and this Country, and it is an interesting fact .(to the publishers) 
to know that the supply does not equal the demand. Select and 
read any one of the above, and you will not be happy till you have 
read them all. It would be of little use giving extracts from the 
thousands of eulogistic press criticisms. Your only plan is to 
buy one, and be convinced that the Novels by The Duchess are 
the most intensely interesting light reading written for many a 
year. 

For sale by all booksellers and iTewsdealers' or sent postage paid 
on receipt of price, by the publishers. ^ , 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., 

14 AND 16 Vesfa' Street, 

New York, 



THE 



LUSTRi 



7/> 



POLISHES 

Are Unrivalled in their Excellence, and always give 

Satisfaction. 
LUSTRO METAL POLISH, for Silver, Nickel, &c. 
LUSTRO SHOE DRESSING, for Ladies' and Children's Shoes. 
LUSTRO STOVE POLISH, for Manufacturers' and Household use. 
LUSTRO BOOT AND SHOE POLISH, superior to all others. 

Beware of Imitations. For Sal© Everywhere. 
"^ \ NOW READY: 

^- By TVilkie Colling, 

No. 85 OP LOVELL'S LIBEARY. Handsome Paper Covers, , . . 20 Cents/ 

This is Wilkie Collins' last novel, and is equal to his 'Woman in White,'" 
and -'The Moonstone." It deals with current topics of great interest, making it 
particularly exciting and impressive. 



THE EIGHT AND WRONG USES OP THE BIBLE. 

By R.ev. R.. Hetier Xe^wton, 

No. 83 LOVELL'S LIBEAEY. Paper Covers, 20 Cents, Cloth, Eed Edges, . 75 Cents. 
A collection of sermons dealing with ujany momentous questions concerning 
the Bible. Mr. Newton gives his reasoning in this volume, in a clear and masterly 
style. The controversy which these sermons have caused in the press has made a 
wide-spread demand for them in book form. 



EARLY DAYS OF CHRISTIANITY, 
By Canon Karrar, 

Author of " SEEKERS AFTER GOD." 

No. 50 LOVELL'S LIBEAEY. Part I and II, Paper, 20 Cents each;' Cloth, . . Sl.OO. 
Canon Farrar probably writes the most beautiful and eloquent English of 
any man living. ' Early Days of Christianity " must be placed ir the fore front of 
his delightful and powerfuT books. No student of Christianity can do without 
reading it. 



.../^fl'SAMA.MA'^OAAnn, 



\^^' 






wm^N. 



>/>nrn.A^'^^^^'^'^?^AAAA/^A 



^m^.f^f.^ 



«%S^ 



Kf^MY^f^t^^fHW^^rAnK^Ai 



' A/^AAA A /^ /N - ,'^Y^'r\ 



A^f\(sr\f^f^A 



AAA/>A^.^'^^^/ 



^0/^nnnAAA/^WAA/:^AAA^nn/^AA6a^aa?P^^^ 



'^n^f>/^^r(AnA/Y\r\r^A^ 



a^^^aaaama. 



.aAAA^aa-AAAAz-^IaAa 



A^/MlArsAA, 



AA^^A^A. 



1 .'.A /s 



.5«?ssoas«o: 



rrfT\fYr^Afsnf\r'Ar^f^Ai 



^m^Q^m.^^^^^Sv^m^f^'^''^^'^ 



mmi^ 



^^mKr^''^f^fmm^^f:. 



^^ymm^. 



IAaAAa. 



^f^^m0^^' 



.AAAAAAA^^^AA^ 



^^^2.:22^^A' 



Waaaa. 



:^^^aS 



'^AAAA.aaAaAAAaA/ 



Aaa^aaa^^^^^^V 



^AAAaAAaAAAAAaAAa: 



aaAAAA^^a/ 



^^^^^^CP^::!^^'>A'^nn.A^,;^,,,_,^^,^flW^^ 



kAAAA^'' ■ 






^A/^Ar\AA 






^«^f$^A^?^^^'^^^^Saft(?AnM/^A 



^^noA^^^^^^ARRRa*. 



^aaa'I' 






SyoOOAn^A 






^AaaJ 



\f^A/^flf^/^f^r^/^^^^^^AAAAAAA/ 



A^XAWAnnft^fl 



^AaA'/\Aa, 



\^. AAAA/2^.^/C\/^0, 






'<S6m 



